Maths Games Used To Remove Homework Conflict

The cry of anguish from a Mother. “My daughter hates homework and it's a struggle every week to get her to do it. I work 4 nights a week so I am limited to how much I can help in the evening. My husband has to be forced to help her when I am at work but they disagree on so much that it becomes a battle and she gives up or he sends her to bed with nothing done!”

The mental block that can easily occur in the busy classroom frequently has little chance of easing at home.. No child actually enjoys parents and teachers being angry with them but there have always been a significant number of UK students who simply cannot retain maths properly when taught the traditional way in school. No matter how hard they try, they require a different teaching method altogether. This is where the latest Maths games and worksheets now available for home use can make a huge difference.

Educational games played at the learning pace of the child provide an enjoyable approach that help children and parents to overcome the block to learning. Putting fun at the forefront in the parent child relationship provides a more practical rapport to coach a child through this difficult transition. Turning the block into a maths game the fear and frustration can be broken The ‘Independent Learning’ method used by ConquerMaths delivers the UK secondary maths curriculum via CDs, or online in brilliant mini-tutorials. Each lesson has its own worksheet and automatic marking that builds into personal progress summaries. Only the essential parts of each lesson are given but the huge benefit of the system are the audio explanations explaining the theory that are synchronised with the onscreen graphics, making the maths much, much easier to understand and take in.

Parents can relax to a large extent, because whilst providing moral support and involvement the ConquerMaths system specifically recommends children get on with their homework independently. They soon enjoy being in total control as the program can be paused and rewound to repeat sections to increase understanding, embed facts and go over anything the child is not sure of to catch up missing knowledge from the class. It is like having a personal teacher going over the lesson with you until you understand. And parents can bring themselves up date too, if they wish!

One ConquerMaths parent, Julia Martin of Buckinghamshire writes “As a person who always found maths a serious challenge when I was at school, I have found this course to be a Godsend. My nine year old son is flying through the tutorials and understanding everything because they are put across so clearly, in 'bite sized' lessons. I am no longer worried about having the ability to teach him maths - in fact, I am learning stuff I never properly understood at school by using the program myself! (I wish we'd had it in my day!)”

Building confidence in children is an essential building block in learning. The time spent in class is much shorter that most of us imagine and a busy lesson with 30 children can leave the struggling mathematician feeling isolated. Using maths games at home in a relaxed environment can pay dividends in boosting understanding, confidence and performance back in class.

Val Constable ConquerMaths Alistair Owens Keen2learn

Can't Read Can't Write TV Shocker Reveals Teaching Resources Opportunity

he new TV documentary highlights the dilemma. Accepting the inevitable slant TV puts on many programmes to add drama, last night’s docudrama featuring a group of nine mature and illiterate students was still shocking.

The reality of this staggering statistic is a body blow to the educational standards in the UK. We still fail to provide the very basics of education to all our children. The TV teacher chosen to lead the recovery demonstrated passion and commitment to the role. But worryingly he was at considerable odds with the teaching resources he was advised to use. If the reading support, including worksheets and procedures developed by the hierarchy were regarded by the teacher as complex, arduous and missing the point what hope is there it will work.

The slightly over emotional teacher, previously a musician, admitted he had never taught anybody to read in his life. Initially he seemed a strange appointment but his direct approach proved the skill of a good teacher can outweigh a multitude of ring binders of arduous theory. His novel approach using educational games supported his passion in the role that started to break through decades of frustration and neglect. Turning reading support into fun and providing one to one support has started to overcome the many reasons for the student’s illiteracy, epitomising what good teaching is all about. Once the inertia is overcome we can expect rapid progress.

Each of the nine students had been failed by the initial schooling process. They had suffered the law of averages, inevitably casting students operating at the bottom of the class into the inevitable realm of exclusion from the lesson. The point emphasized by the illiterate plumber set word search puzzles at school and sent home at midday.

Teachers facing the constant pressure of attaining academic targets are bound to focus on the average and brighter student to boost the score. In place of spending vast sums of money on complex procedures maybe we need to listen more closely to the operational experience of teachers. Investing in a policy where no student should leave primary school whilst failing in literacy or numeracy would deal with the problem at source. This perhaps brutal approach should receive vital direct funding where it will help give all children the best chance to thrive academically in secondary school. The “Every Child a Reader” literacy scheme introduced by the government has to be a prerequisite in any target judgement.

The sterling work completed by the reading support organisations such as the “Volunteer Reading Help” ( primary schools ) and “Reading Matters”(secondary schools) provide 1:1 support to struggling readers in school. Both are registered charities and reliant on volunteers. Should government funding be extended to develop the services offered by these groups? A greater number of trained volunteers to help teachers in more schools and perhaps adult classes can only help - provided they do not loose their independence.

The TV program’s refreshing angle showed the element of fun through reading games overcame many of the issues faced by the students, and that illiteracy is not down to a single cause. The musical introduction to reading skills introduced enjoyment to the process that seemed adequately to displace the complex procedures. But learning to read through English games involves teaching phonics - the sound of words - ironically where the “ph” of phonics is of course pronounced as “f” which is where we came in!

Lost Education To Be Recovered At Home

A growing concern voiced by many teachers is the level of disruption occurring in the average class. Ranging from the severe to a simple case of horseplay at the start of the lesson it has a dramatic effect in draining the teaching resources as well as impacting on the development of children in the class All is not lost as parents can affect a striking recovery plan that helps their child and the teacher.

Edward Lazear of the Hoover Institution found that, “If, on average, each student disrupts the class just 1 percent of the time, the time available for learning drops to 74 percent for a class size of 30.” Even the best teachers can only do so much, and many have cited disruption as the most stressful element of teaching. It is no wonder that the “teach to test” syndrome is one consequence of a school’s need to grasp some vestige of achievement by streamlining the teaching content to hit targets Regrettably this results in a veneer of knowledge, presenting a smart image on the surface but with little depth. Now it is possible for parents to use educational games at home to give greater practical support in the teaching activities of their children.
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Waste Not Want Not

Here's a view from a "humbug". We continually hear of the plight of schools that lack equipment both in the developed and underdeveloped world. Wouldn’t it be a grand gesture if children celebrated their end of school prom in a more modest fashion, and donated the saved expenditure towards equipment for their school or a third world school. A lasting benefit to future generations, not socially devisive and not a stretched limo in sight.

The Education A Bedtime Story Gave A Mother And Her Famous Son.

Paddington bear popped home yesterday, not to Peru but keen2learn. Bet you thought he was born in Peru and resides in Paddington. Well he does, but the bedrooms at Home Farm in Burghwallis, now the base for keen to learn, echo to bedtime stories read many years ago by Shirley and Eddie Clarkson. The kitchen table witnessed Shirley make the very first Paddington bear as a Christmas present for her children, Joanna and Jeremy, and brought the stories to life. Friends upon meeting the character in the flesh wanted one, and the rest is history.

Shirley has just launched her book “Bearely Believable” coinciding with the 50^th anniversary of the Paddington stories by Michael bond. It’s the amusing story of the fun they had living in Home Farm and the trials and tribulations surrounding the development of Paddington bear. The kitchen table was quickly outgrown, and production moved to the spare bedroom, then across the yard to a converted cowshed and finally to a local factory. Shirley revisited Home Farm recently - with the original Paddington - after a 21 year absence to record these events for the BBC.

Bedtime stories turned Paddington into a firm favourite in the Clarkson family. The imagination that bedtime stories trigger in a child’s mind develops their learning process. Parents reading stories and playing other educational games with their children throughout the schooling process helps stimulate learning. And the interaction between child and parent becomes mutually rewarding with obvious benefits back at school.

Our modern lifestyle leads to many parents being time poor. Coupled with a frequent reluctance to read aloud the essential bedtime story has taken a back seat with 54% of Dad’s. But modern technology has come to the aid of the busy parent. Subscriptions to on-line stories narrated by actors and including animation and highlighted script turn a PC or laptop into a world of imagination. An educational game, the service enhances reading and literacy skills in children, is easy for tired Dads to join in and learn how to read a story aloud.

In a world of TV, Internet, Wii, Nintendo and computers it is all too easy to assume children can amuse themselves. Encouraging developments in the Electronic Media to include educational games is a positive move. However, parents and grandparents still have a vital role to play. Help, encouragement, mutual involvement and interactive feedback can all inspire a child to learn more. They love to share their experience and show how they are doing.

Electronic Media has the advantage that it never tires of repetition, something the tired parent can be grateful of when the same story or game is played yet again! Predicting what happens next is an essential part of the learning curve, children love to be able to foretell and repetitive feedback is part of this process.

So how is Paddington doing after all these years? The stories are still popular and the Paddington bear figures are still in shops. Production has moved from the bedroom at Home Farm to China. Marmalade sandwiches are probably deep fried. If you want the full story read Shirley’s great book. And did those bedtime stories read by Shirley and Eddie Clarkson help the children? One of them is Jeremy Clarkson; author, journalist and broadcaster – with an innate ability to tell a great story.

The Ice Journey

The Ice Journey

This book is an interesting blend of fact and fiction, which could be used effectively in several different ways. One of the stated aims for the author is to encourage and enable grandparents to participate in their grandchildren’s education. Many grandparents have an active part in caring for grandchildren today and this book provides a story they can read to their grandchildren. The fact that the book is written as a grandmother reading the story to her grandchildren positively reinforces the idea of the grandparent having both interesting and even educational information. I feel one of the great advantages of this book are the activities listed at the back. These could be done in a classroom situation but equally could be done in the house with Grandma after reading the story. The idea of making a DNA sweet model struck me in particular as an activity which grandmas would be happy to organise. Grandmas love to give their grandchildren sweets but may be accused of spoiling the children. This they can show is an education activity in which sweets are essential!

I feel the bilingual edition will be of benefit to both learners and native speakers. As a Welsh learner I found the audio Welsh version easy to understand but it did not sound like ‘learner’ material which gave me a greater sense of achievement because I was able to understand it. There is a lack of Welsh language material for learners and native speakers. This bilingual work has the added advantage of providing an opportunity for non-Welsh speakers (parents and grandparents) to become involved in their children’s Welsh medium educational experiences. Non-Welsh speaking grandparents could play the audio version but use the English language text and activities to allow them to discuss the material with their Welsh-speaking grandchildren.

The illustrations blend well with the text, which must have required a great deal of work in the bilingual edition. Single pictures cover a double page with the text in both languages fitting round it. Other pages contain different yet appropriate images on the Welsh and English pages.

In an age where the ‘Google generation’ may shun the printed word, this book may provide a bridge between ‘grandma’s world’ of books as a source of information and the Internet where so many children would ‘google’ to find the information and its links to relevant websites.


Ellen Harris
Learning Resources Adviser
Learning Resources Centre, Trinity College Carmarthen

Fractions, Decimals and Percentages Are Just Coded Maths Games

Fractions, Decimals and Percentages Are Just Coded Maths Games

I always found math to be a difficult subject to learn at school. I put most of my failing down to the fact I sat too close to an old fashioned pot-bellied stove. This provided a great source of warmth but also destroyed my concentration. At least I learnt to spell soporific in a written defence during a subsequent detention, but the absence of maths sense slowed the learning curve for some years. Maths was always a struggle; the pot bellied stove inflicted collateral damage but I believe the real culprit was the boring way maths was taught.

Mathematics can be described as a series of fantastic codes. Once they are broken the maths games that can be played are endless and enjoyable. The modern technique of using educational games as the base makes life far more interesting and pays dividends in the attention paid by the average child. It also allows parents to repeat say a maths game at home

Like many things in life once a code is understood the task becomes far easier. This is the case when we come across a new computer program. Initially it is hard work and intuition fights with or against the operating manual. Once mastered a host of shortcuts and shortcomings are revealed and in no time our learning curve overtakes the computer and we start to identify areas where the program could be improved.

A recent example of breaking a mathematics code appeared in the form of the crop circle in the south of England. The intricate pattern that was pressed into a wheat field at first sight appeared as just another artistic pattern in a crop circle. In reality it was a complex diagram that an astrophysicist decoded to reveal its meaning as a fantastic way to represent the value of pi to the first 10 significant places. Guaranteed 99% of us who looked at the crop circle failed to understand that it was a mathematics code rather than a decorative pattern. Obviously the perpetrator knew what he was doing and set this elaborate game to challenge mathematicians. Once the code was broken the answer was obvious.

Leonardo Da Vinci was artist and a great mathematician who used codes to set out his theories. Used by subsequent generations of scholars even today they provide educational games that require ingenuity to crack the code. Some areas of maths have a number of different ways of expressing the same information. Fractions and percentages express similar information in slightly different form. This feature allows us to mask the details by expressing facts in a form of code.

Recently Ed balls, the schools Secretary in the UK, announced that two fifths of all secondary schools are underperforming. He could of course have said that 40 per cent of all schools are failing which conjures up a much bigger image. Expressing the number of schools as a fraction is code to mask the actual hard fact. He could have just also revealed the actual number, but to say that 638 schools are failing would come as quite a shock to parents of the children involved. More startling perhaps would be an announcement that there are around 1,215,000 children at these 638 schools many of whom are potentially failing at maths. That’s a much bigger number than we might associate with two fifths! Codes are designed to initially hide or abbreviate the facts. Mr Balls could be said to be masking the facts, but he has only been in the job for a few months. Let’s hope he can quickly crack the code to improve the educational performance of future generations of children in the UK.