Inside a dysfunctional high school maths class and what children and parents can do    077

Parents imagine that what happens at school is education. Well sometimes not much of this occurs and this often happens in maths, a subject where there must be organised teaching and sequential progress. For children who lack basic maths skills and perhaps engagement it all blows up in Years 8 and 9.  Their mathematical underperformance can no longer be hidden and parents wonder what happened.

It has been happening since about Year 5.  In senior primary school children should know their multiplication tables and combinations.  Teachers seem to be just too busy for specific instruction in number facts and since more capable children do know them anyway teachers just move on. But the downward slide has started.

Off to high school. In Year 7 most of the maths is still at advanced primary school level so things are not too bad.  But then in Year 8 the real high school maths begins and many children cannot follow the teacher’s explanations and they fail to develop understanding. The teacher goes too quickly.

Just consider for a moment that a maths textbook may have about 500 pages. This means about two to four pages a lesson if the teacher is following the book. No wonder so many children get left behind. They just hope they can remember which calculator buttons to press, and they trust the answer they get no matter what. Topics such as negative numbers, especially with fractions for example, remain confusing because the children never learned their number facts. Even simple things like finding the highest common factor of two numbers goes over their heads because they do not know what the word ‘common’ means.

So, knock knock, let’s enter the maths classroom. The children seem occupied but not many are really following and doing their work. The basic pattern is that the teacher explains the new topic, or perhaps an extension of the old, and then the children are set to work. But not everyone is listening, and many cannot follow. Such children pretend to understand the teacher explanation or actively tune out, finding other things to do.  But the things get worse.

The children then work on a number of practice examples or whole sets. The more capable children plough ahead while the rest work slowly, overuse the calculator, or just talk with other children or even play on their phone. Now the children at the top of the class understand the new work after one or two teacher explanations but for most children longer and more detailed teaching is needed but they do not receive this. So the talking, misbehaviour and going to the toilet continue, as it does every lesson in this class. Many children, far too many, begin to think that they are not good at maths and soon they are telling their parents, and their parents agree.

What to do? Here are five positive actions: (1) parents need to monitor maths progress very carefully. There are school reports, assignments, test marks and NAPLAN results, marked homework and so on. Results should be interpreted carefully as schools differ significantly in the standard of maths taught and there can be differences between classes too. Parents should look for trends and patterns in the results.

(2) Understand what type of class your child is in. Are there top classes or are all the classes ungraded? This can be clarified at an interview with your child’s maths teacher along with, of course, your child’s progress. There may be other options for your child’s class placement. In the mean time your child must learn to concentrate, work and learn in a noisy, distracting and even emotionally upsetting classroom.

(3) Teach your child his or her basic number facts, 9 + 5, 13 – 8, 4 x 12, 36 ÷ 6 etc. Give special attention to higher decades, thus 13 + 8, 33 + 8, 83 + 8 and so on. Commercial material probably will not do this, so this is more work for you. Be clear on one thing: it is unlikely that your child will learn his or her number facts at school, for a variety of reasons. Yet these basic facts need to be thoroughly mastered by Year 5. You shouldn’t have to do all this but teachers seem to be so busy and there is less time for maths than in the past.

(4) Each night your child should revise what happened in maths that day, especially if there was some difficulty. This ensures that he or she is ready next day to move on with the teacher. If homework has been set then of course your child must do it, and should then do it again. This builds speed which is vital in a maths test.

(5) Develop your child’s ability to talk to you about what is happening at school in maths. This will not be easy. For further information about maths see my article: “Helping your child with maths—parents can do a lot more than they think”. Good luck.

All content copyright—Mark Thackray—Australian Educational Services