Maths

Most children who come to me for maths are not bad at maths. They have a hole somewhere behind where the class has got to, and every new topic falls through it. Place value, usually. Or the idea that a fraction is a number and not a picture of a meat pie.

So the first lessons are spent finding the hole rather than drilling the topic they are stuck on. I use a lot of physical things at first: counters, strips of paper, bottle tops, money. Children who have decided they are 'not a maths person' will often do things with their hands that they refuse to do on paper, and that is a way back in.

Once the hole is filled we go back to what the class is doing, and the classwork usually stops being frightening within a few weeks.

Typical starting points: number bonds and place value, times tables that will not stick, long division, fractions and decimals, and word problems where the child can do the sum but cannot find it.