Everything Exams

Having been a teacher for a number of decades, I’ve come across quite a few students who really hated maths. What was peculiar though was that when I worked with the majority of them individually, they were pretty capable of completing maths problems and calculations but they seemed very anxious about the whole idea of ‘doing’ maths. I’ve had a number of ESL students who came to the UK aged 7, having not attended school in their home country since nations had different schooling policies. These students in particular seemed to underperform throughout their schooling in maths, whereas their English scores went up and up as their language skills improved. They seemed to struggle to catch up with their classmates if they hadn’t had much experience with mathematical play prior to starting school. It turns out that there’s quite a bit of research which supports the idea that giving preschoolers the opportunity to explore mathmatical concepts such as number, shape, and fractions can make a massive difference to their grades over a decade later, when they’re in high school.

In a study published in 2013, 180 children were tested from kindergarten to age 13 and it was found that adolescent scores for numeracy correlated closely with their scores upon entry to school. Put simply, if a child’s mathematical knowledge, as tested in kindergarten, is below average, it is likely that they will continue to score below average throughout their schooling.

This is a bit of a bombshell, but it can also be seen as an opportunity for parents and carers. Investing time and a small amount of resources in developing your child’s numerical skills before they start mainstream education is worthwhile. Additionally, many studies have been carried out which show a link between success in mathematics at school and participants’ level of employment as adults. It would appear that a small intervention in a child’s early years could benefit them for the rest of their life.

Another study published in 2013 discovered a link between knowledge of fractions at age 10 and achievement in mathematics further on in a child’s schooling. Fractions relate closely to many higher-level mathematical concepts such as algebra. Ensuring your child is confident using fractions can help them understand more demanding mathematical ideas in their future education. I like to use a hands-on approach with my students to help them really understand how fractions relate to each other, and I use magnetic shapes divided into fractions, ranging from halves to twelfths. These can be combined and compared with each other, to illustrate physically for example that 1/6+1/3+2/12=2/3.

There is another aspect of this which I have noticed in my own teaching a number of times. If a child starts school thinking that they are not as good at maths as other students, this impacts their performance considerably. In a paper published in 2016 by Professor Ignacio Palacios-Huerta from the London School of Economics, the psychological effects on cognitive ability of being ‘behind’ in a competitive game was investigated. His subjects were competitive chess players whose matches were recorded on a worldwide database of results. When playing chess, the player moving the white pieces moves first giving them a tactical advantage, leading to an increased likelihood that they would win. In a chess competition, players compete against many other players, taking turns to play white then black pieces. If a player starts a competition with white pieces, they are more likely to win and would go into the following round essentially a step ahead of players who started with black. At the end of the competition, you would expect the results to be 50/50, especially if you looked at the results over many thousands of competitions. However, it was found that those players who started competitions playing white were more likely to win by the end, in a surprising ratio of 57.4/42.6, an incredible 15% difference. These were high level, experienced competitors whose cognitive skills were compromised by their irrational perception of being ‘behind’ other players. Imagine what effect a similar situation might have on a young child who feels that other children are more academically advanced or more familiar with material presented to them in the classroom. 

So the bottom line is…if you have preschoolers, find some great maths toys to give them that psychological advantage straight away. My personal favourites are abacuses, Mathlink Cubes, Colour Factor, real or realistic play money, Velcro calendars, 100 number boards with removable numbers, board games with dice which involve counting (such as snakes and ladders and Monopoly), magnetic fractions and an analogue clock face with movable hands showing the 24-hour clock. Many of these resources can be bought ready made, but if you are short of money, cardboard versions can also be easily created by you at home and great templates can be downloaded from the internet. Paying for things in shops is great to learn about change as is making patterns in a 100 number grid, which introduces the idea of times tables.