Year 4 maths

[Midlandsmom]

Thanks, I thought I'd mirror school by doing 6's, and move on as they do, but I think I'll have to rethink my entire approach at this rate. Just practised this week's spellings. Thought I'd better check she knows what the words mean. Nope. Seems that doesn't matter either, as long as they can spell them. This is going to be a bumpy ride.

[booellesmum]

Look on the bright side, at least she can spell them. DD2 has always had appalling spelling even though we try really hard. It took 3 years of complaining to her school that they weren't correcting her mistakes before someone took notice. Felt like I was always taking 2 steps forward and one back as school not correcting her was consolidating her mistakes. I got comments like " we can understand what she means " , " she is not the worst in the class " and my personal favourite " we don't like to correct all their mistakes as it discourages them ".
She has been at GS since Sept. and almost every piece of work has half a dozen spelling corrections which I go over with her. Feel like we may actually get somewhere now!

[mumsdarling2]

my personal favourite " we don't like to correct all their mistakes as it discourages them ".

I have heard this a lot and was genuinely worried (a while ago) that I was inflicting some emotional trauma on my DS by constantly correcting his spelling. Now I know that I was right in being ambitious about his ability to spell correctly.

[mystery]

Not correcting spellings - don't get me started on that one. What is it about? Is every teacher or school like this and why doesn't OFSTED notice? Can't they spell either?

This article explains some of the theory behind it quite nicely:

http://www.cultofpedagogy.com/spelling-mistakes/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


But I don't think that author is condoning what I see in my year 5 child's books - a lot of words which she could easily have learned to spell correctly pretty early on but for which an incorrect spelling is now ingrained. "My favrout couler is bloo," and so on.

[Midlandsmom]

The incentive at present at our school is a certificate for any child that gets 10/10 in their spellings, this is working well, hence DD will learn to spell them. But there's no beeping point to her knowing how to spell if she'll then never use any of the words in her writing because she doesn't know what they mean. Disjointed, much? If I uncover much more I think I'll be crying instead of laughing, this is only week one of starting with her

Taking some comfort in not being the only one from all your comments!

[mystery]

You could turn the weekly spelling list into a useful exercise if she will play ball (mine won't!). Get her to look up synonyms and antonyms, the etymology of the word, other words with the same root word but different parts of speech etc. It will be useful in the verbal reasoning and she will learning many more words for the price of ten.

[Midlandsmom]

You could turn the weekly spelling list into a useful exercise if she will play ball (mine won't!). Get her to look up synonyms and antonyms, the etymology of the word, other words with the same root word but different parts of speech etc. It will be useful in the verbal reasoning and she will learning many more words for the price of ten.

Very good idea, I think I'll try this and see if she engages!

[magwich2]

We gave up on the Primary school curriculum at this stage with the 11+ looming on the horizon because the 11+ in Warks at least necessitates learning maths up to the end of year 6, despite being taken at the very beginning of year 6.
We found it more useful (and with better resources available) to use the GCSE foundation tier as a basis for teaching DS at home. Previous papers CGP revision books etc and something to aim for instead of endless sheets of maths. If your DC finds it ok then why not put them in for the actual exam at the end of year 6 - good material if an appeal is necessary and more use than the SATs.

[Proud_Dad]

Look on the bright side, at least she can spell them. DD2 has always had appalling spelling even though we try really hard. It took 3 years of complaining to her school that they weren't correcting her mistakes before someone took notice. Felt like I was always taking 2 steps forward and one back as school not correcting her was consolidating her mistakes. I got comments like " we can understand what she means " , " she is not the worst in the class " and my personal favourite " we don't like to correct all their mistakes as it discourages them ".

I hope they didn't adopt the same mentality when marking maths.

2 + 2 = 5. Well done! That's close enough!

Actually even that wouldn't surprise me these days.

BTW, I found times tables one of the easiest things to practice as you can do it anywhere (e.g. in the car) by just giving them random multiplications and making a game out of it seeing how fast they can get the answer etc.

[yoyo123]

Latest thinking, in our area, is that the standard of literacy should be the same in all books, so I correct spelling, punctuation and grammar, especially if it is is somethiing we have been banging on about like capital letters! (Yes this is year 5 )