Maths horror

I remember finding fractions very difficult when I was at primary school. Our maths project is heading towards fractions very soon and it will, I’m sure, be one of the topics that really challenge some of the children. I was very fortunate in primary school. For nearly all of my primary education I was lucky enough to have good teachers. They were enthusiastic, encouraging and very caring (all except the head teacher of the first school that I attended in 1963 who cheerfully caned five year olds, self included). I’ve been collecting resources to help with our teacher training program and found the following quote in a really excellent book called “Mathematics Explained for Primary Teachers”. I can only thank my teachers for helping me overcome the horrors of maths. Research would seem to suggest that many people were not so lucky. In the book it says:

“Findings indicate that many adults, in relation to mathematical tasks, admit to feelings of anxiety, helplessness, fear, dislike and even guilt”.

I hope that we can avoid creating the same feelings in any of our pupils. Now that the school term has started I’m getting into the swing of working with our youngsters at homework time in the evening. Having spent my teaching career in England working in High Schools teaching older students I am finding working with younger children a lot of fun. Playing maths games with the children and getting them to make resources that will help them understand key concepts creates all sorts of opportunities for creativity and entertainment. We started this evening by making some simple fraction lines so that the children can see what fractions really look like and can understand why two quarters are the same as a half. We’ll move on to putting the theory into practice by sharing out food and doing some shopping. One of the great (though sometimes overwhelming) things about teaching is the way that it gets the creative juices flowing. It’s difficult to obtain a lot of the resources that we take for granted in schools in the UK. We’ll need to make some money to make the shopping role play more interesting so the photocopier will be hard at work tomorrow. We don’t have the same foods to divide up that children in England are familiar with either. The humble pizza can be used to teach a great number of maths concepts. The nearest equivalent over here is the chapatti so I think we might have to do some cooking over the week-end.

School should, I think, be a place that children can’t wait to come to every day because it’s such a good place to be. Today the weather has been more like it be should be at this time of year, with the rain falling in the evening. This has meant that the children have, for the first time since term started, been able to enjoy playing on our field. We have just had the grass on the field slashed (as we don’t have a lawn mower). This is a bit like scything the grass down to a manageable length. Today the cut grass had dried sufficiently well to be gathered up to use as mulch on our farm. The youngest children had a great time at lunchtime rolling the grass up into big bundles using sticks (a bit like rolling snow to make a big snowball). Their teachers and I were impressed with their ‘work’ rate and their teamwork. Apart from their occasional lapses into throwing the grass over each other the children really worked hard. Some of them had races to see who could push their bundle of grass to the big heap the quickest. Four very small lads worked together to manhandle really big bundles of grass to the pile. They were very impressive. With the sun shining brightly for once, watching the children and chatting with their teachers was a lovely way to pass twenty minutes and a real encouragement. Left to their own devices children are a lot smarter and more inventive than we often give them credit for.