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What happened to equal opportunities?

Posted: Fri Oct 19, 2012 7:12 am
by mystery
Just my usual grouse about stupid school homeworks that have been unnecessarily and badly "differentiated". We all received our year 2 maths homeworks this week - adding on a number line. Some of us have received things like 35 + 13, 58 + 19 (with never more than one in the tens column in the second number) and some of us have received things like 35 + 23, 58 + 31 etc i.e. with a variety of numbers in the tens column in the second number.

All are capable of doing both. And all can do additions like this by a variety of other methods - partitioning included (by all I mean the friends who have communicated about it - not necessarily the whole class).

What's the point of this stupid dumbing down for some kids and not others? And how can a teacher of a big class judge in one lesson which children are capable of which - even if a child seemed not to understand it in a lesson it might be nothing to do with their mathematical understanding - there are so many different reasons for "blockages" at that age. And if you don't then send them home with a decent worked example of what they maybe didn't grasp in class how is the gap ever going to be made up? Next week they'll be on to a different topic. It's just so silly.

They could have sent a homework which started off with the easier examples and worked up to the harder ones and left it up to the parents and children where to stop.