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I need some help with my child’s maths homework. I’ve written it exactly as it is stated in his homework book.

There are 80 children in year 6.

16 children have watched both the films Frozen and Tangled.

28 children have watched Tangled.

Twice as many children have watched frozen than tangled.

How many children have not watched frozen or tangled?

12?

24?

12?

.

12

Take the 16 children that have watched both out of the equation, leaving you with 12 who have watched tangled (28-16), 40 (2x28=56, 56-16=40) who have watched Frozen and 16 who have watched both - totalling 68. Take that away from 80 and you get 12.

80 (total) - 28 (tangled) - 56 (frozen) + 16 (overlap) = 12

'kin boom

S M R T, I am so smart.

12, but it’s horribly worded.

Corazon de Leon wrote:12, but it’s horribly worded.

This is my problem. The wording is very confusing.

I’ve been switching between 24 and 12 for different reasons.

Corazon de Leon wrote:12, but it’s horribly worded.

Unfortunately that seems to be the trend with Primary Maths now. Ever since the new national curriculum came in back in 2014 there's been this push for 'mastery' which is supposed to be about giving children a deeper understanding of Maths. From my experience it largely just seems to confuse kids, overloading them with unnecessary information and questions which are deliberately obtuse (like the one in the opening post).

Jamo3103 wrote:

Corazon de Leon wrote:12, but it’s horribly worded.

Unfortunately that seems to be the trend with Primary Maths now. Ever since the new national curriculum came in back in 2014 there's been this push for 'mastery' which is supposed to be about giving children a deeper understanding of Maths. From my experience it largely just seems to confuse kids, overloading them with unnecessary information and questions which are deliberately obtuse (like the one in the opening post).

Yep. He’s been coming home with loads of questions where the wording is horrible and leaves you spending all your time pondering the different outcomes.

Return_of_the_STAR wrote:

Jamo3103 wrote:

Corazon de Leon wrote:12, but it’s horribly worded.

Unfortunately that seems to be the trend with Primary Maths now. Ever since the new national curriculum came in back in 2014 there's been this push for 'mastery' which is supposed to be about giving children a deeper understanding of Maths. From my experience it largely just seems to confuse kids, overloading them with unnecessary information and questions which are deliberately obtuse (like the one in the opening post).

Yep. He’s been coming home with loads of questions where the wording is horrible and leaves you spending all your time pondering the different outcomes.

Yeah it's a load of nonsense and it doesn't work either. I've taught Primary Maths both under the old curriculum (with more traditional methods) and the new 'mastery' curriculum and generally had far better outcomes under the old curriculum.

For future reference, most teachers will probably be getting these questions from a website somewhere as there's loads of teacher resource websites nowadays so googling the question might help you find where it came from, find the answer and most importantly, save you a load of wasted time.

Jamo3103 wrote:

Return_of_the_STAR wrote:

Jamo3103 wrote:

Corazon de Leon wrote:12, but it’s horribly worded.

Unfortunately that seems to be the trend with Primary Maths now. Ever since the new national curriculum came in back in 2014 there's been this push for 'mastery' which is supposed to be about giving children a deeper understanding of Maths. From my experience it largely just seems to confuse kids, overloading them with unnecessary information and questions which are deliberately obtuse (like the one in the opening post).

Yep. He’s been coming home with loads of questions where the wording is horrible and leaves you spending all your time pondering the different outcomes.

Yeah it's a load of nonsense and it doesn't work either. I've taught Primary Maths both under the old curriculum (with more traditional methods) and the new 'mastery' curriculum and generally had far better outcomes under the old curriculum.

For future reference, most teachers will probably be getting these questions from a website somewhere as there's loads of teacher resource websites nowadays so googling the question might help you find where it came from, find the answer and most importantly, save you a load of wasted time.

I did have a quick google for it but couldn’t find it. I found a number of websites though where it was clear that they have used before though

Maybe use a Venn diagram to help him visualise the situation.

Just to be clear that style of question has nothing specifically to do with the Mastery approach to maths and had been used extensively both before and since the adoption of the approach.

My wife is a teacher and has spent a lot of time on this stuff and if she were on here would be far more capable than me of articulating why the mastery approach is so effective so I'll just leave it at saying: mastery is great, providing teachers know how to teach it.

Jenuall wrote:Just to be clear that style of question has nothing specifically to do with the Mastery approach to maths and had been used extensively both before and since the adoption of the approach.

My wife is a teacher and has spent a lot of time on this stuff and if she were on here would be far more capable than me of articulating why the mastery approach is so effective so I'll just leave it at saying: mastery is great, providing teachers know how to teach it.

The focus on questioning like that has become a priority since schools adopted the mastery approach. Not to say that questions like that didn't exist prior to that, of course they did, but there is a much heavier focus on them now, hence the shift towards having two reasoning papers in Year 6 Sat's. Prior to that such questioning techniques were almost exclusively geared towards children who were identified as gifted and talented.

I am also a teacher and whilst I certainly appreciate the implication that I don't know how to teach it, I have seen enough evidence that it isn't an approach that is widely effective, not yet anyway. The Dfe's own evidence also backs that up, it simply hasn't raised attainment.

My school was one of the first in the North West to implement the mastery approach, is a core member of the North West Primary Maths Hub and is coordinated by a teacher who is a lead for Mastery across the North West. I have had a lot of exposure to this teaching approach and have seen first hand that it is not an approach that works for all children. This is also evident as I privately tutor up to GCSE level and work with a lot of children who are deeply confused by the multitiude of different methods and techniques they have been taught as a part of the mastery approach.

The whole concept of mastery is based on teaching in Shanghai, yet their education system works entirely differently to our own. It may well be effective ultimately - the concept of children fully understanding how numbers work, rather than rote learning of methods without any context does make sense. Once it is fully adapted to schools in the UK it may well prove to be effective, but currently it isn't and it could be another decade or more before it is.

Jamo3103 wrote:

Jenuall wrote:Just to be clear that style of question has nothing specifically to do with the Mastery approach to maths and had been used extensively both before and since the adoption of the approach.

My wife is a teacher and has spent a lot of time on this stuff and if she were on here would be far more capable than me of articulating why the mastery approach is so effective so I'll just leave it at saying: mastery is great, providing teachers know how to teach it.

The focus on questioning like that has become a priority since schools adopted the mastery approach. Not to say that questions like that didn't exist prior to that, of course they did, but there is a much heavier focus on them now, hence the shift towards having two reasoning papers in Year 6 Sat's. Prior to that such questioning techniques were almost exclusively geared towards children who were identified as gifted and talented.

I am also a teacher and whilst I certainly appreciate the implication that I don't know how to teach it, I have seen enough evidence that it isn't an approach that is widely effective, not yet anyway. The Dfe's own evidence also backs that up, it simply hasn't raised attainment.

My school was one of the first in the North West to implement the mastery approach, is a core member of the North West Primary Maths Hub and is coordinated by a teacher who is a lead for Mastery across the North West. I have had a lot of exposure to this teaching approach and have seen first hand that it is not an approach that works for all children. This is also evident as I privately tutor up to GCSE level and work with a lot of children who are deeply confused by the multitiude of different methods and techniques they have been taught as a part of the mastery approach.

The whole concept of mastery is based on teaching in Shanghai, yet their education system works entirely differently to our own. It may well be effective ultimately - the concept of children fully understanding how numbers work, rather than rote learning of methods without any context does make sense. Once it is fully adapted to schools in the UK it may well prove to be effective, but currently it isn't and it could be another decade or more before it is.

My comment about teachers needing to know how to teach it was intended as a general response to the adoption, not a specific comment against you so apologies if your read it that way.

My wife's previous school was one of the first to implement this in Gloucestershire and she was heavily involved in the Maths Hub, her head was regularly visiting schools in Shanghai as part of a knowledge sharing/transfer exercise.

Any curriculum change is going to involve a period of upheaval and must be done in a coordinated approach where a huge amount of focus and effort needs to be on ensuring the teachers themselves are fully aware of the change, what it requires and endeavours to equip them to teach it effectively. That is something that sadly tends to fail on some level any time there is a change.

But it's undoubtedly also the case that some teachers are resistant to change and reluctant to properly engage with how best to adopt a new approach in these situations. That's understandable for all sorts of reasons. "If it ain't broke don't fix it" is a very useful mantra, but it also relies on the leading statement being true - sadly there is plenty of evidence that it was broke, increasingly kids are getting through primary education with large gaps in their actual understanding of core mathematical concepts because the focus has been on achieving results in assessments rather than building foundational knowledge. Yes we want kids to test well and get good grades, but not at the expense of their actual understanding. Maths in particular is a discipline that is fundamentally incremental in its nature - comprehension of later more complex concepts relies hugely on the building blocks that sit below it, a kid who fails to grasp concepts at the lower end is strawberry floated when it comes to properly understanding something later - there will be a need to play catch up massively, switch to simply trying to coach them into getting the right answers at the expense of understanding, or sadly it may result in simply giving up on them.

No approach is perfect for every child, there is no one size fits all approach to education and new ideas and approaches are going to have teething problems and phases where a lot of learning and adjustment is required. But that doesn't mean we should reject them outright.

I have no idea how you could think there's any ambiguity in the wording of the problem, or how the heck you could ever land at 24 as the answer.

Jenuall wrote:

Jamo3103 wrote:

Jenuall wrote:Just to be clear that style of question has nothing specifically to do with the Mastery approach to maths and had been used extensively both before and since the adoption of the approach.

My wife is a teacher and has spent a lot of time on this stuff and if she were on here would be far more capable than me of articulating why the mastery approach is so effective so I'll just leave it at saying: mastery is great, providing teachers know how to teach it.

The focus on questioning like that has become a priority since schools adopted the mastery approach. Not to say that questions like that didn't exist prior to that, of course they did, but there is a much heavier focus on them now, hence the shift towards having two reasoning papers in Year 6 Sat's. Prior to that such questioning techniques were almost exclusively geared towards children who were identified as gifted and talented.

I am also a teacher and whilst I certainly appreciate the implication that I don't know how to teach it, I have seen enough evidence that it isn't an approach that is widely effective, not yet anyway. The Dfe's own evidence also backs that up, it simply hasn't raised attainment.

My school was one of the first in the North West to implement the mastery approach, is a core member of the North West Primary Maths Hub and is coordinated by a teacher who is a lead for Mastery across the North West. I have had a lot of exposure to this teaching approach and have seen first hand that it is not an approach that works for all children. This is also evident as I privately tutor up to GCSE level and work with a lot of children who are deeply confused by the multitiude of different methods and techniques they have been taught as a part of the mastery approach.

The whole concept of mastery is based on teaching in Shanghai, yet their education system works entirely differently to our own. It may well be effective ultimately - the concept of children fully understanding how numbers work, rather than rote learning of methods without any context does make sense. Once it is fully adapted to schools in the UK it may well prove to be effective, but currently it isn't and it could be another decade or more before it is.

My comment about teachers needing to know how to teach it was intended as a general response to the adoption, not a specific comment against you so apologies if your read it that way.

My wife's previous school was one of the first to implement this in Gloucestershire and she was heavily involved in the Maths Hub, her head was regularly visiting schools in Shanghai as part of a knowledge sharing/transfer exercise.

Any curriculum change is going to involve a period of upheaval and must be done in a coordinated approach where a huge amount of focus and effort needs to be on ensuring the teachers themselves are fully aware of the change, what it requires and endeavours to equip them to teach it effectively. That is something that sadly tends to fail on some level any time there is a change.

But it's undoubtedly also the case that some teachers are resistant to change and reluctant to properly engage with how best to adopt a new approach in these situations. That's understandable for all sorts of reasons. "If it ain't broke don't fix it" is a very useful mantra, but it also relies on the leading statement being true - sadly there is plenty of evidence that it was broke, increasingly kids are getting through primary education with large gaps in their actual understanding of core mathematical concepts because the focus has been on achieving results in assessments rather than building foundational knowledge. Yes we want kids to test well and get good grades, but not at the expense of their actual understanding. Maths in particular is a discipline that is fundamentally incremental in its nature - comprehension of later more complex concepts relies hugely on the building blocks that sit below it, a kid who fails to grasp concepts at the lower end is strawberry floated when it comes to properly understanding something later - there will be a need to play catch up massively, switch to simply trying to coach them into getting the right answers at the expense of understanding, or sadly it may result in simply giving up on them.

No approach is perfect for every child, there is no one size fits all approach to education and new ideas and approaches are going to have teething problems and phases where a lot of learning and adjustment is required. But that doesn't mean we should reject them outright.

Apologies for getting defensive! I'm passionate about what I do so can sometimes take things to heart!

It sounds like your wife's experience in her school was quite similar to my own, we had a teacher exchange with Shanghai and it was fascinating to see their teachers work but they are experts in their field and exclusively teach Maths in a system where their approach has been embedded for decades. I have to admit, despite enjoying watching them teach, my personal highlight of their visit was being complimented on my use of chopsticks during a meal out

I don't inherently have an issue with the concept of Mastery, I fully agree with you that deep understanding of concepts is fundamental to being able to access more complex Maths later on. Learning methods, without context, is probably how most of us were taught but it causes confusion later on. Case in point, being told that when multiplying by ten you 'add a zero' (I'm sure we were all taught this in school!), something which on a basic level works but then requires unpicking when it comes to teaching about decimal numbers.

I think the issue here, and my problem with Mastery as things stand is that in this country we tend to dive head first into educational change, looking for quick fixes and then having management within schools and Ofsted both expecting immediate results. The majority of teachers in schools here haven't been taught in that way, haven't received sufficient training, often lack the subject knowledge and are almost immediately being expected to be teaching as effectively as teachers in Shanghai. It then leads to children being presented with questions like the one above, which a teacher has most likely just found online, with little concept of how to handle it and then as I say, ending up thoroughly confused.

I feel that one of the biggest barriers here is that they've tried to adopt mastery without actually changing the content of the curriculum. When we were visited by Shanghai teachers they were astounded that we were teaching pupils how to multiply fractions in Year 6 as they would teach that much later on. Instead they would be focusing on deeply embedding the understanding of unit and non-unit fractions. Unfortunately, the amount of content we need to cover, due to the demands of the curriculum, largely prevents any time to deeply embed basic concepts which directly contradicts the whole concept of Maths mastery. They also put such a focus on judging schools based on their SAT's results that by Year 6 schools end up just having to teach to the test so they don't have Ofsted breathing down their neck. As a concept I think Mastery could eventually be just as effective as it is in Shanghai but it will require a real culture shift and strong leadership from the government to actually reach that point.

I absolutely agree that some teachers are resistant to change, I've coordinated the Computing curriculum at both my current and previous schools and it is absolutely painful. The reluctance from teachers to get on board with it and actually have a go at teaching any aspect of it, particularly Coding, is absolutely shocking. At my last school I was actually running some training on Coding whilst the headteacher sat there moaning all the way through about how she didn't see the point. Again though, we've gone from a place where teachers were expected to teach a bit of word processing and excel, to a place where teachers are expected to teach about coding and computer hardware. Being a nerd, this is right up my street but the majority of teachers have no understanding or interest in this, nor have they ever been taught about it. The most they get is a little bit of staff training, often from teachers who are no experts themselves. Again though, school management and Ofsted are both expecting immediate results which is a huge part of the problem.

jiggles wrote:I have no idea how you could think there's any ambiguity in the wording of the problem, or how the heck you could ever land at 24 as the answer.

Yeah reads fine to me.

It’s about applying to the real world and by doing word questions you have to translate to maths it makes it more usable day to day.