Maths bug

It's no good - I've been bitten by the maths bug. It's been a fairly intensive week for maths this week so I guess it's not really all that surprising. The teachers' training day yesterday provided a good focus for strategies to make our pupils more confident mathematicians and was the springboard for a good deal of research for me. I have this tendency to go to town on the research for new ventures, especially if they have the potential to transform a situation.

In my research I've discovered a fascinating new condition called Dyscalculia. This is defined in a book called The Trouble With Maths as "a perseverant condition that affects the ability to acquire mathematical skills despite appropriate instructions." I've also been surprised by the pervasiveness of maths anxiety amongst adults (especially trainee primary teachers) and have found out that young people's maths difficulties are very difficult to pigeon hole. This makes me all the more determined to do what I can to help our teaching team to ratchet up our pupils' maths abilities.

My five 'guinea pigs' for a maths makeover have completed their first diagnostic test for me. Two of them volunteered last night after a coaching session, one was added at the beginning of homework time tonight and two more asked if they could have a paper when they saw what the others were doing. It's fantastic having such keen students.

If you fancy exercising your latent maths talents have a go at these two questions, taken from a book called Mathematics Explained for Primary Teachers. (Real challenge is not to use a calculator and view them as mental arithmetic problems).

1) I have 34 one-penny coins, 29 ten-penny coins and 3 pound coins. Apply the principle of 'exchanging ten of these for one of these' to reduce this collection of coins to the smallest number of 1p, 10p and £1 coins.

2) John was given £50 for his birthday and thought he might spend it all on his favourite chocolate bars. They cost 32p each. How many could he buy?

Answers supplied in tomorrow's post. Give yourself an extra pat on the back if you worked both answers out in your head!