This is really good on how the primary maths curriculum could do less, but better. www.tes.com/magazine/tea... - ThreadSky

michaelt1979.bsky.social • 164 days ago

This is really good on how the primary maths curriculum could do less, but better.
https://www.tes.com/magazine/teaching-learning/primary/how-fix-primary-maths-curriculum?gift-id=b9b7d67c-625d-48d9-965c-8f4d83074882

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poppywat.bsky.social•163 days ago

In secondary 2/3 of their GCSE is with a calculator. Their mental maths doesn't slow them down here. Maybe there is a place for calculators at primary to engage children into the processes of maths regardless of the numbers and supporting then to understand the rules of number.

julia-t.bsky.social•162 days ago

I think ‘mental maths’ is more an automaticity, a deep understanding of mathematical structures and a fluency, where you can ‘see’ in your head the structure of the problem and what methods or procedures you might choose to solve it… with your calculator.

poppywat.bsky.social•161 days ago

I don't know if mental maths does provide all the deep understanding. It is definitely important, but there is also a place for calculators to speed up the understanding of processes. These processes are important when the numbers are not to nice and intuition cannot be used.

cm44.bsky.social•164 days ago

Agreed.

padimc.bsky.social•164 days ago

A good article. Food for thought. Slavishly following other countries maths teaching models contributed to this. We need to find our own path. This looks like a good start. I see 13yo pupils still using fingers instead of knowing basic number bonds. And don’t get me started on multiplication!

rachelorr.bsky.social•164 days ago

I remember Andrew Jeffrey saying a lot of this decades ago. He said children probably learn most of the maths in Y1 and then the values increase and difficulty of challenge but the actual 'maths' had been learnt.

natty008.bsky.social•164 days ago

Totally agree.

shellb1207.bsky.social•164 days ago

Completely agree. I also wonder if a graded assessment system would be useful for maths, like you have with musical instruments. Much harder to implement though.

plunk273.bsky.social•164 days ago

Much more of a focus on mental maths and the language of maths would imho be good - and teaching and learning maths - not being slaves to THE method - if I get asked if this is a bar problem too many times more…
And what is this pleasure thing? Enjoyment ??? Bonkers thought 😜

poppywat.bsky.social•163 days ago

Mental maths is numeracy and only a small part of maths. Understanding the rules of number is the only way to progress to abstract and generalisation with algebra.

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