Arguing over maths

[JAF]

Originally Posted by Floridatilly

With an 8 year old 🤯
Do you ever feel like banging your head against a brick wall when dealing with a defiant child 🙈
Mason gets lots of homework, more than I remember my older two getting but I imagine the teachers are trying to catch up on missed curriculum.
Maths section is around 25-30 questions. Each question is in a box with the question at the top, then a space for working out and another box at the bottom for the answer.
In maths it’s important to show your working out because you could get the answer wrong but do the working out correctly and still get a mark and/or the teacher can clearly see how you have got your answer and were you went wrong if incorrect.
Example questions are 1,876 + 328
2,106 - 368, 8 x 7, as the questions move on they get more difficult to long multiplication etc so the children do as many as they can.
Mason looks at the question and immediately writes the answer down really quickly, whipping through the questions before I can even read them.
I tell him to write his workings out but he refuses because to quote Mason ‘that is wasting my time, I see the answer in my mind!’
But you NEED to write the workings out! But he won’t listen, he says he doesn’t see the workings out, he just see’s the answers so he isn’t wasting more of his time 😬😬
He is such a monkey. He never gets any wrong no matter how hard they are, I can’t work them out in my head 🙈, he is like a little genius but its so frustrating doing homework with him 😂😂😂😂

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I feel your pain we had 2 who were like this and both of them got top grade at A levels and were still doing the calcs in their heads. Eldest ds got told off more than once for calling out the answer to the teacher before he had completed it on the board because it was 'easy' to work out and didn't need a load of lines explaining it. We gave up in the end telling them to put down on paper their workings out.

[Cloverlady]

Originally Posted by JAF

I feel your pain we had 2 who were like this and both of them got top grade at A levels and were still doing the calcs in their heads. Eldest ds got told off more than once for calling out the answer to the teacher before he had completed it on the board because it was 'easy' to work out and didn't need a load of lines explaining it. We gave up in the end telling them to put down on paper their workings out.

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Same. Feel your pain!
I'm quite ahem, 'average' at maths to say the least and I need a calculator - but my hubby and all our boys are super super quick at maths and willall call out the answer to a calculation before I have even typed it into a calculator.
I find it frustrating when they do that, but hubby and youngest really are lightening quick.
Hubby is a high in his field Physics professional and youngest is now at Medical school training to be a doctor, so their minds obviously work in a certain way.
Can't fault them, but still frustrating to me nonetheless

[Gryff]

DH is an accountant he’s a right pain going round the supermarket as he knows what the total is in his head
DS1 ,2, 3 their great Grampa taugh them from any age to work out in their head the return on a bookies line
I have dyslexia but can work out maths problems old to new money imperial to metric etc in my head
Only DH and DS 2 ever put workings down on paper DH the accountant DS2 an engineer and that’s only because money is involved
Just sometimes you need to pick your battles and let them learn the hard way

[jocat]

My son was exactly the same. I remember seeing a worksheet in his maths book at parents evening when he was about 7. There were problems where he’d calculated the answer with space underneath to show the method. In that space he’d drawn a picture of his head and an arrow pointing to his brain.

No advice though, sorry. 🙈 Think his teachers eventually gave up trying to make him write his calculations down too.

[Andy C]

Might be worth trying something like:
"It's great that you can see the answers instantly with these simpler questions. But if you don't know HOW to work out answers, you'll always be limited to what your brain can do today.

Maths gets deeper and deeper and more and more complicated until it gets to the point where no-one can just see the answer without learning how to work them out. When they do get familiar enough with how to work out that particular problem, then you'll be able to just see the answer to harder and harder problems - ones you can't even imagine right now. But you have to put a little effort in to learn how to learn."

Books like Maths Tricks to Blow your Mind might help.

[Bozza]

Originally Posted by Andy C

Maths gets deeper and deeper and more and more complicated until it gets to the point where no-one can just see the answer without learning how to work them out.

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Indeed and, with respect to the poster above, A-level maths will come under that bracket - at least initially, when the jump from GCSE maths is pretty substantial.

Not only that, but letters feature in A-level maths a lot more than numbers do!

Coincidentally, I've just seen my son has received some new maths homework, in the parent app thing we have access to, and it states very clearly that if all instructions are not carried out as detailed - which stresses demonstrating working out - then a detention will be issued!

[FlorayG]

Originally Posted by Bozza

Coincidentally, I've just seen my son has received some new maths homework, in the parent app thing we have access to, and it states very clearly that if all instructions are not carried out as detailed - which stresses demonstrating working out - then a detention will be issued!

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What an appalling thing to do. So kids who are able to complete the task a different way and still get the correct answer are penalised? Are we just churning out a load of educational clones in our schools today? Getting the correct answer is what matters and if you get the correct answer without 'workings out' often enough it will be obvious that you know what you are doing and didn't just guess

[Bozza]

Originally Posted by FlorayG

What an appalling thing to do. So kids who are able to complete the task a different way and still get the correct answer are penalised? Are we just churning out a load of educational clones in our schools today? Getting the correct answer is what matters and if you get the correct answer without 'workings out' often enough it will be obvious that you know what you are doing and didn't just guess

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Respectfully, I disagree.

Firstly, and I say this as someone who was always lucky enough (and it is just luck) to be very good at maths - I fully understand the importance in being able to demonstrate the process followed to arrive at a given solution.

Secondly, and probably more importantly right now, these kids are early in their first term of their first year at secondary school. Many will have faced significant disruption to their education over the last two years. By asking the children to show full working for each question, it will assist the teachers in assessing where each child is, and where extra help may be required.

Thirdly, it's not a case of "show your working or get a detention", it's "follow all instructions given to you..." which, again, I'm fully supportive of. Following instructions carefully is a life skill.

Finally, the school is hot on discipline. For example, kids who are seen with a mobile phone in hand during the school day will also receive a detention (they are allowed to have phone in their bags, turned off, so they have them to and from school etc). Shirt untucked under your blazer - that will get you a bad mark too.

I'm far from a disciplinarian. I'm the "good cop" to his mum's "bad cop" role, but I have no issue with the school setting our their standards, and expecting children to adhere to them.

[Nimbus]

Originally Posted by FlorayG

What an appalling thing to do. So kids who are able to complete the task a different way and still get the correct answer are penalised? Are we just churning out a load of educational clones in our schools today? Getting the correct answer is what matters and if you get the correct answer without 'workings out' often enough it will be obvious that you know what you are doing and didn't just guess

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But the point they are trying to make is that getting the correct answer isn't what matters, not at this stage. Demonstrating how you get to that correct answer, and thus showing that you understand the fundamental methods used, is actually what matters. It's not like the teacher doesn't know what the answer is and needs someone to tell them. They are trying to determine if the child knows how to work it out using the "long" method.

You can learn by parrot fashion that 6 x 9 = 54 and just know it by remembering the answer. But if you don't understand why 6 times 9 equals 54 or the method used to get to that answer then you'll be stuck later on.

Having said that, I do agree that giving out detention for not showing the 'workings out' is harsh. Especially if that detention doesn't help them understand why it's important to show the 'workings out' and simply punishes them. Instead it might have been better to deduct a few marks due to a lack of 'workings out' and then explain why they didn't get full marks.


(BTW, back when I was at primary school 40+ years ago, we had to learn the times table off by heart. At the end of the day, the teacher would quickly ask each of us a question - like "What's 6 times 9?" - and we could only go home if we answered correctly within a second or so. Otherwise, the teacher would go round the rest of the class and come back to those who didn't answer correctly and keep asking them questions until they got the correct answer. Only then could they leave).

[Claudette]

Originally Posted by FlorayG

What an appalling thing to do. So kids who are able to complete the task a different way and still get the correct answer are penalised? Are we just churning out a load of educational clones in our schools today? Getting the correct answer is what matters and if you get the correct answer without 'workings out' often enough it will be obvious that you know what you are doing and didn't just guess

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Oh no no, this is not how maths works. I am mathematical, my degree subject was mathematics and absolutely the workings are key. I don’t understand your point about clones, showing workings are surely demonstrating the true understanding. Presenting a final result shows no understanding at all, it could have been copied, googled, provided by a parent or anything. Results with no workings will get zero marks in the future and OP is correct in trying to get this point across.

In the next few years, maths (for Mason) will become a lot more than arithmetic. Numbers will hardly be used at all and it won’t always be about a single final result. It is beneficial for the student to show workings in order to get the marks they deserve in the situation where they make a tiny mistake in any step. If marking were based on end result only, a small mistake along the way would result in no marks, whereas if the marker can see the error but also see how it was carried through, a sound understanding and logical working, the majority of the marks may still be awarded.