Mathematics education uncovered and recovered

# Primary maths

## Times tables again

After a short break, the Department against Education launched a new attack on children. This time the attack takes the form of a new compulsory national test for children in Year 4, the times tables test. The obsession with memorising times tables has always puzzled me. Weekly times tables speed tests, the practice of chanting […]

## Learn to add with Mathletics?

Here is a 7-year-old doing her homework on iPad. She logs into Mathletics that invites her to do 33 + 1 laid out as for column addition. The girl taps the index on 3 to enter 34, but the clever Mathletics demands to enter the answer “properly” – right to left, unit digit first!

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N is in Year 5. “What are you doing at school now?” “Umm, we are still converting fractions to decimals and back” “Show me an example” “Well, it’s something like  $$\mathrm{\frac{1}{2}=0.5}$$,  $$\mathrm{\frac{1}{4}=0.25}$$, $$\mathrm{ \frac{7}{10}=0.7}$$ ” “I see. Can you write $$\mathrm{\frac{1}{8 }}$$ and $$\mathrm{\frac{3}{40 }}$$ as decimals?” He can. Without much effort. “The interesting […]

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