Wondering how to help your child with maths at home? Well, before you start giving them complicated problems to solve on their own, it’s important that you find out what your little one’s current needs and capabilities are first.
How you prepare your child will depend largely on his current level of mathematical ability. This article in particular pertains to students who are in Primary School.
Go For The Most Challenging Guide/Assessment Books?
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You will probably be tempted to get the most challenging assessment and guide books for your child, thinking that if they learn how to do those questions, they will naturally be able to handle easier ones.
However, giving your child the wrong type of questions to work on will be a waste of time as they will not learn much due to their limited understanding.
If they are forced to go on despite being unable to handle the questions, you will soon find yourself fighting a losing battle involving arguments and a very unhappy child. A parent-child relationship is very precious. Damaging it like this is just not worth it.
The worst part is that they will soon give up or even come to believe that they “just cannot do math”. They may even come to hate math, and that is something that is very difficult to reverse.
Instead, you can easily avoid these problems and make the learning practices encouraging and effective by using the right level of materials and expectations.
How to Determine Your Child’s Current Ability and Need
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In order to determine your child’s ability, look at the last 3 to 4 exam or test results achieved to get an average as results can vary widely based on the difficulty of the paper. It would be more accurate if you are able to get the average results from your child’s school teacher. You might have to contact the school/teacher directly for this.
Another option, albeit a more tedious one, would be to let your child do about 4 exam papers of average difficulty. Just tell them to try their best in the time allocated for the exam paper. Do not give your child a time extension even if they are not able to finish the paper as it would lead to an inaccurate diagnosis of the current ability.
Then simply use the answer key to mark the paper. If you only have 1 or 2 results from your child’s own school test or assessment, simply supplement with additional papers accordingly.
To help make this process simpler, 4 papers have been curated for each level to represent an average. The answers are attached in the exam papers.
You will be able to download these free exam papers based on your child’s current level in school using this link: https://www.mastermathmodels.com/exampapers-ap
The Goal
Building your child’s confidence and interest in learning maths.
Learning is a process that happens in stages. The goal here is to bring your child up to the next level of foundation and understanding. Done properly, this will lead to a build up of your child’s self confidence is their ability and eventually to really enjoy learning maths.
Do not try to skip steps. For example, many parents get their children to work on lots of problem sums when they cannot even do simple multiplication. That would be like asking the child to hit a tennis ball without a racket!
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Prepare Based on Your Child’s Current Standard
The table below shows how you should prepare your child based on their current ability.
Of course, this is just a generalisation based on over 20 years of teaching experience and writing of guide books. While not comprehensive, it will provide a safe guideline as to what type of materials to use and what to focus on.
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Current Result
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Primary 1 – 2 this year
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Primary 3 – 4 this year
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Primary 5 this year
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Less than
50 marks
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Drills for number bonds involving addition and subtraction
Multiplication up to 10
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Drills on :
→ addition and subtraction of numbers and fractions
→ conversion of measurements eg. time, length, mass, etc
→ simple fractions
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Drills on:
→ 4 Operations of fractions
→ Conversion of measurements
→ ratio, percentage
→ Conversion between ratio, percentage, fractions and decimals
→ perimeter, area and angles
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50 to
70 marks
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Simple word problems with the use of simple models
1 to 2 steps
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Simple word problems involving less than 4 steps with models where necessary
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70 to
85 marks
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Simple Word Problems with the use of models
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Word Problems with models where necessary
Avoid challenging word problems
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Word problems with models where necessary
Avoid challenging word problems
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85 to
100 marks
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Multiplication and Division Word Problems
Simple Models
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Challenging word problems and multi-level models
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Challenging word problems and multi-level models. Should include questions that combines different topics. Generally 4 to 5 mark type questions
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“Drills” include all questions that are not word problems/problem sums
For the learning of math models, the “Master Math Models” series would be suitable for self-learning and home-teaching for parents who are not familiar with the use of models.
This article was written by Mr Ben Lowe
Tutored 2000 + students over last 25 years
Author of Master Math Models (P3 – P6 series of 9 books)
Author of Mastering Math Models (P3 – P6 series of 9 books)
Speaker for multiple school workshops on Best Practices for Math Modelling
PGDE (NTU, NIE)
Instagram: @benjaminlowofficial
Telegram Group: PSLE Primary Math Resources – Trinity Learning Centre
YouTube: Benjamin Low – Master Math Models
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