Year 8 maths; is this normal?. What to ask teacher?
Moderators: Section Moderators, Forum Moderators
Re: Year 8 maths; is this normal?. What to ask teacher?
Yes I'm sure he will. And just reading this thread has helped me too. He's quite easy to work with and accepting of parental support too which helpsAmber wrote:
Loobylou, I hope your son has a different teacher next year. Sometimes it just needs a different face, a different voice, and all will be well.
Re: Year 8 maths; is this normal?. What to ask teacher?
I'm always around to help 
Re: Year 8 maths; is this normal?. What to ask teacher?
Thank you. I'll let you know the next topic when it comesGuest55 wrote:I'm always around to help
Re: Year 8 maths; is this normal?. What to ask teacher?
A few years ago I spoke to a primary teacher who was part of the initial consortium that observed one of the teachers from Shanghai deliver a lesson in the UK. It was slow and involved chanting apparently
Anyway, that teacher didn't implement the scheme in their school but did say there were some interesting resources which they incorporated. They purchased them as they were matched by the government funding at the time. They used it as a 'tool box' if I remember the phrase correctly.
I think that was a good way to look at it. The point of the consortiums was to look at what could be incorporated and what couldn't. The government may have been pushing it but it was down to the teaching profession to use their knowledge to reflect critically and evaluate. Assuming some teachers took everything without question then I suspect that was a failing on their part. I might be a little biased here but I always thought all teachers should have masters degrees by default. Another thread for another day perhaps.
Apologies to loobylou. The thread went a little pear shaped - my fault.
Anyway, that teacher didn't implement the scheme in their school but did say there were some interesting resources which they incorporated. They purchased them as they were matched by the government funding at the time. They used it as a 'tool box' if I remember the phrase correctly.
I think that was a good way to look at it. The point of the consortiums was to look at what could be incorporated and what couldn't. The government may have been pushing it but it was down to the teaching profession to use their knowledge to reflect critically and evaluate. Assuming some teachers took everything without question then I suspect that was a failing on their part. I might be a little biased here but I always thought all teachers should have masters degrees by default. Another thread for another day perhaps.
Apologies to loobylou. The thread went a little pear shaped - my fault.
Re: Year 8 maths; is this normal?. What to ask teacher?
That's what the Maths Specialist Teacher scheme was about - getting Primary teachers to study for part of a Masters with the training run jointly by an LA and a university. The funding was pulled after the first cohort ...RedPanda wrote:I might be a little biased here but I always thought all teachers should have masters degrees by default.
Re: Year 8 maths; is this normal?. What to ask teacher?
Loubylou, can you / your son email teachers at your school? If so, if it were me I would drop the current teacher a line saying that son wants to do some practice at home of topics covered so far at home. Ask if there is a year 8 topic list on the online learning platform and if not, please could you have one. Ask if there are particular textbooks they use at school and get a copy. If not, can suggest some we have which are clear and cover ks3 work nicely.
I promise you that there will be nothing too difficult in year 8 that will not quickly improve with a little bit of time at home like this. Maths teachers are still a shortage subject and many year7,8,9 are taught by someone for whom it is a second string to their bow.
We had some strange maths assessment experience in year 8. Was not a good health year ether. Dd was coming home disillusioned with some of the in-school maths test. I asked if she could have copies of the questions to reassure herself at home that she could do all the questions if not felling tired/ill. The two tests that she had felt bad about were dreadful in almost every way. Goodness knows why they were being used as whole year group tests. Anyhow, it set her mind at rest about her maths and enabled us to say important thing was to use a good textbook and cover some good material and take school prepared tests with pinch of salt as GCSE papers are well constructed ( on the whole).
at GCSE, they are gong to have to get used to working frm text books / revision guides to revise well - so it is no bad thing to get used to using one now. In my experience, after a ideologically driven book free primary education, and lack of funding for books at secondary combined with a love of projects involving scraping the Internet for free info of varying levels of reliability, my kids are bad at using course texts and it is a useful skill.
I promise you that there will be nothing too difficult in year 8 that will not quickly improve with a little bit of time at home like this. Maths teachers are still a shortage subject and many year7,8,9 are taught by someone for whom it is a second string to their bow.
We had some strange maths assessment experience in year 8. Was not a good health year ether. Dd was coming home disillusioned with some of the in-school maths test. I asked if she could have copies of the questions to reassure herself at home that she could do all the questions if not felling tired/ill. The two tests that she had felt bad about were dreadful in almost every way. Goodness knows why they were being used as whole year group tests. Anyhow, it set her mind at rest about her maths and enabled us to say important thing was to use a good textbook and cover some good material and take school prepared tests with pinch of salt as GCSE papers are well constructed ( on the whole).
at GCSE, they are gong to have to get used to working frm text books / revision guides to revise well - so it is no bad thing to get used to using one now. In my experience, after a ideologically driven book free primary education, and lack of funding for books at secondary combined with a love of projects involving scraping the Internet for free info of varying levels of reliability, my kids are bad at using course texts and it is a useful skill.