Maths Primary School

Primary School Aged Children Struggling With Key Stage 2 Maths

Maths can be a daunting and confusing subject to learn. It is a progressive subject, and once a child falls behind and struggles to understand certain Math topics, this leads to difficulties in learning more advanced Math.

You can help your child to learn Maths using various methods; you don't have to have an A-level in Maths, as has been highlighted by the Channel 4 program "Dispatches" in February this year.

Your child will not learn if he/she is upset or stressed. Learning should be a positive experience.

Don't obsess about what your child cannot do. If a topic is proving difficult to learn, do not show your child that you are frustrated, just tell yourself and your child that that exercise brought them one step closer to understanding it and tackle it another day. Try to plan your home tutor lessons; it's not a good idea to plan a thirty-minute lesson when your child has just finished double Maths lesson at school.

If your child is finding a topic frustrating and is getting upset, take a short time-out. Your child may bring home some Maths homework that you find difficult or can't remember how to solve. Take a look at the problems before you try to help your child. Purchasing educational software and workbooks can help tremendously, especially if you feel that your child doesn't receive enough homework or your child is struggling with Maths. You can make a positive difference in your child's knowledge and with time and patience their Maths skills will flourish.

Introduction
Taking part in a mathematics competition allows students to sharpen their problem solving skills and serves to generate interest for mathematics amongst them. Annually,there are various mathematics olympiads which primary school students can participate in and some of the more prominient ones are listed in this article.

The Asia Pacific Mathematical Olympiad for Primary Schools 2009 (APMOPS 2009) is organised annually in April -May by the Hwa Chong Institution-Aphelion Consortium. The contest held in Singapore is commonly known as Singapore Mathematical Olympiad for Primary Schools (SMOPS).

Awards for SMOPS
Students compete for the following awards in the SMOPS.

1) Top 10 individual prizes, awarded to the top 10 scorers.
2) 3 Honourable Mention Team Awards and 5 Honourable Mention Individual Awards.
3) Top 3 school awards, given to the three schools with the highest combined score of its top three students.

APMOPS 2009
During APMOPS, students get the opportunity to interact with other mathematically talented students from the various countries. Format of the APMOPS Contest
The APMOPS contest challenges students to complete six questions within two hours. National Mathematical Olympiad of Singapore (NMOS)
The NMOS is a competition organised by the NUS High School of Mathematics and Science. This competition is designed to spur interest amongst students for mathematics. Various awards are given to students who managed to achieve quality scores in competition. American Mathematics Contest 8(AMC 8)
The American Mathematics Contest 8 is the first of a series of mathematics competitions organised by the Mathematical Association of America and is administered by Maths Oasis Pte Ltd in Singapore. This International competition welcomes students who are interested in mathematics and enrolled in grades 8 or Secondary 2 and below to participate.

Students get to challenge themselves with mathematics that is beyond what they usually encounter in school and they can experience a wide spectrum of topics available in Middle School Mathematics. The multiple-choice format of this competition makes it attemptable by many students. Annually, more than a hundred thousand students participate in the AMC 8 contest.High scoring students in this contest can look forward to challenge themselves in higher levels contest such as the AMC 10. "The new developmental research shows that this historical consensus about children was just plain wrong. Children are not blank tablets or unbridled appetites or even intuitive seers. Babies and young children think, observe and reason. Like Jung these children have never really understood what numbers are. The root cause is almost always to be found in the first few years of schooling when children are exposed to formal math activities (sums) before they have grasped the underlying concepts.

Numbers pose a real problem for young children. As one exasperated adult pointed out, their teachers were unable to help because...'they didn't understand why we don't understand.'

There are many superbly gifted practitioners in our schools but from the weight of my 37 year's experience I would say the majority of teachers of elementary and primary school children are not entirely comfortable with math themselves.

I hated math with a passion. I was in danger of creating a black hole in the math teaching firmament. Next we'll look at why your young child must be exposed to this specific learning style if he is to understand math and not end up counting on his fingers. And also, why it doesn't matter what curriculum or prescribed math course your child is obliged to follow.