Year 4 homework

well i didn't come across algebra til the first year of secondary school, and i resented it.
i felt that maths was about numbers, not letters which belonged in the other subjects, where they gathered into sentences.
i thought maths was taking over, as if literature tried to push into geometry or compound interest.
why do i suddenly think of Dickens; mr micawber ?
i came second only to Japanese girl in maths in the first year. by the time it came to O-level i got unclassified.
but 10 years later i did it externally, and got the middle grade pass. i was the only person in the hall not using a calculator, long division etc all down the side of the paper. and had to do differential calculus, and parabolas. though what they are for i couldn't say.

Learning algebra helps to develop your critical thinking skills. That includes problem solving, logic, patterns, and reasoning. You need to know algebra for many professions, especially those in science and maths.

I'm probably a bit odd, but I enjoy puzzles like this. However, I have to admit to being a bit rusty!

is this a type of algebra ?
can't see the point of it.

Thank you Miss.
I promise to clean my teeth properly.
?

Of course they are! Help yourself from thetin in my bottom drawer. Where the are kept hidden from the school dentist! ?

Thank goodness I was sitting at the back talking and not listening as usual MissMaryDoll.

Are those nice shapes sweeties?

OOOOOPS ERROR HANGS HEAD IN SHAME!

THIS TEACHER WAS HAVING AN OFF DAY TOO!!!

Start with what you can solve.

Rhombus minus pentagon = rhombus, therefore the pentagon must equal zero.

Then replace the pentagon in the calculation with 0.

Next step is (+ - 4 = 0), therefore the cross must equal 4.

Substitute the cross with the 4 and you can then work out the last part.

Not very well explained, but I don't have my interactive whiteboard handy! Well that's my excuse. .

FannyCornforth

Ellianne
Oh dear! That teacher was having an off day...

The thing is Fanny she was a brilliant teacher in the classroom. This looks like a case of copy and paste gone wrong! I guess we all have those off days.

Ellianne they look like some of the Maths puzzles my Y3 DGD devised for her other Granny!
I see her at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in a few years' time

Ellianne that's smacked my gob!

I think it's confusing that a plus sign is used as one of the symbols.
I'm good at sums but that symbol creates a mental block that has to be overcome - unnecessarily, in my view, if the aim is simply to teach the maths.

The only other type of this question was one that all the numbers bar one so it was easy to work out the value of the shape. Then it jumped straight to this more complex problem.

I was confused by the cross initially because it looked like a plus symbol. It seemed a daft shape to use.

Ellianne
Oh dear! That teacher was having an off day...

Ellianne that’s a bit like this...

I'm not kidding, this was my DGS's Maths homework during lockdown. Needless to say, he gave up.

The sheet is trying get pupils to see how subtraction works. Once they understand that in the units column that a-?=a, then ? must be zero.
(You find out what the diamond is last, whereas it seems intuitive that because you start with the diamond, you should find out what it is sooner!)
You don't need an example or to see the whole sheet, you do need the teacher to say that if you can't 'see' that puzzle, move onto the next one. Come back to the unfinished previous one later/tomorrow/at the weekend.
Kids do like puzzles

Yes, White Rose maths is excellent.
I'm a primary trained teacher.
Maths is my weakest subject, so I understand how children struggle with it, but I really rate WRM.

Yes, there must be more to it than what we can see.

FannyCornforth

White Rose maths always gives lots of examples and practice.
There would have been lots of scaffolding leading up to this.
Was this not provided?

I'm glad you told me it is Maths! I was thinking maybe hieroglyphics (History)?

Were you not given any worked examples?
You can see from the screenshot that it's just one of many.

It took me a minute or two to realize that it was subtraction.

Once that penny dropped, I was able to work out the values of the symbols, but can't imagine for one minute that I would have been able to tackle that in year 4!

White Rose maths always gives lots of examples and practice.
There would have been lots of scaffolding leading up to this.
Was this not provided?

Whenever parents said to me that they wouldn’t be able to help with (secondary school languages) homework I told they shouldn’t have to if appropriate homework has been set!

These poor children. How demoralizing for them - how off-putting of going to school - how deeply pointless.