Re: Algebra at Primary School

In article <ihJmf.6370$iz3.1398@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Les Crossan <les.NOSPAMcrossan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>Part of the problem is that's she's bored senseless. My daughter goes to
>one of the best primaries in North Tyneside [...].

"Best" by your observation or by repute? My experience is that
"repute" is no guide -- no matter how bad things get, everyone [else]
still says "You must be wrong, 'cos it's such a good school", and that's
even the families who are sharing your bad experiences. With hindsight,
we could have picked up the warning signals from the Ofsted reports, but
you need a Civil Service mind to understand those.

Anyway, if you are *otherwise* happy with the school, then you
have to work with them rather than with across them. If it *is* a
decent school, then they won't make her use coins etc once they have
understood that she is ahead of the game, they'll set her other tasks
[reading, or helping the weaker children, or whatever]. Meanwhile, I
suggest you divert her mathematical attention into puzzles. At roughly
her age, I found a copy of Dudeney's "Amusements in Mathematics" lying
around the house. Nowadays, the language is no doubt too old-fashioned,
but I found it fascinating. Hundreds of little puzzles, from arithmetic,
algebra, dissections, geometry, the lot, all set in scenes with a story
[cyclist knocked down, can't remember the car's number plate, but does
note that the sum of the digits equals the product, that sort of thing.]
There *must* be similar books around today ....

If you're *not* otherwise happy with the school, take her away.
We just drifted into the "best" schools around for our children, on the
assumption that all schools were really the same, except that some were
"better" than others. It was only when we actually looked around, once
we'd decided to change, that we realised how different schools could be.
Trust your vibes!

--
Andy Walker, School of MathSci., Univ. of Nott'm, UK.
anw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
.