Some sensible maths ideas from Labour

Richard Hudson, an American academic, claims the invention of the term 'fronted adverbial' in the 60s. Generally speaking it's what, in my day, I was called a subordinate clause.

The Americans to love to invent unnecessay terms to complicate life.

I totally agree with M0nica.

On the maths issue - listen to Martin Lewis’s latest podcast where he talks about what he has done to help with financial numeracy in the classroom:

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0gkx014

(There’s a good section on car insurance too and what we can do to get the best deals.)

Stylistic fronting (as opposed to phonetic fronting), also called front-focus, moves elements traditionally placed to the right of the verb, to the front. It’s typical of Icelandic and Scandinavian languages and in Old and Middle English, so it’s nothing new.

I don’t know if and and why schools are concentrating on adverbial fronting, but anything that moves composition on from basic SVO, subject, verb, object is good imo.

People may be familar with the 5Hs and W principle - who, what, where, when, why and how? It’s the basis of fiction, journalism, detection and all manner of topics that need enquiry. Which of the 5Hs and W has primary focus, depends on context and what effect the writer is trying to achieve, what he or she wants the reader to focus on.

Prepositional clause:

A boy stood on the corner waiting for a bus.

Fronted (where):

On the corner, a boy stood waiting for a bus.

… changes the focus from the boy to where he is waiting.

As the story is developed, the writer may chose to say more about the corner. What is on the corner? Is it a house or a shop? Does anyone live there? Is there a garden? Is the shop open or closed? Is it dark? Is there a broken street light? Is the bus stop near the corner? Is it raining? Is he sheltering there temporarily until he sees the bus coming? And so on.

Adverbial clause:

She removed the hot dish from the oven very carefully.

Fronted (how):

Very carefully, she removed the hot dish from the oven.

… changes the focus from the woman removing the dish to how she did it.

Why is she being very careful? Is she old and infirm? Or is she young and inexperienced and her parents are letting her cook dinner for the first time? Is the dish too full and likely to spill? Has she just grabbed a thin tea towel rather than oven gloves so knows she needs to be more careful how she holds the dish?

We’ll go out tomorrow, if I’m free.

Fronted (who):

If I’m free, we’ll got out tomorrow.

… changes the focus from the first person plural to the first person singular.

What’s the relationship here? Is there an imbalance? Why would someone put themselves first in that sentence?

I agree that in amateur hands, fronting can look deliberate and clumsy but in the hands of developing writers it adds drama and feeds the imagination.

What I would be concerned about in a school context is that the exercise is just going through the motions with little or no time to discuss why one might choose to switch the focus. Are children being encouraged to think about why?

When used by skilled writers, it can add drama, imperative, surprise and urgency e.g.:

Shakespeare’s Lear:

Come not between the dragon and his wrath. Or/
Do not come between the dragon and his wrath.

Tolkein’s Hobbit:

Out jumped the goblins. Or/
The goblins jumped out.

Suddenly, up came Gollum and whispered and hissed. Or/
Gollum came up suddenly and whispered and hissed.

Which do you prefer?

I remember buying four cakes at the bakers in the mid 70s, the girl wrote dow 22p four times and then added them up! I think teaching maths until 18 is a waste of most students time, apart from those who want to go onto A level maths.

😁

A 'fronted adverbial' sounds like a garden shrub. I have a nice display of frontal adverbials in my garden, the flowers are a pretty blue and the leaves go red in autumn. However they prefer an acid soil and a shady situation.

Blossoming

My short term memory is very short term 😂

I don't think I worked it out last time anyway!

My short term memory is very short term 😂

I think there was a discussion about them a while ago, Blossoming

Blossoming

Actually I do know what a fronted adverbial is.

No idea when, where or how I learned it though

Gransnet?
😁

Actually I do know what a fronted adverbial is.

No idea when, where or how I learned it though

Doodledog

Yes, I imagine I was too.

I still don't know why that construction seems to be given so much weight, though. It is a style favoured by cheap magazines :
'Hanging out the washing, I caught sight of my toyboy groping my sister.' or 'Switching on the TV, I was surprised to see my husband on Crimewatch waving my kitchen knife in the Post Office.'

Maybe the writers have all been taught that fronted adverbials are the way ahead? I once did a course on writing for magazines, and asked why the stories so often started in that manner. The woman running it was older than me, and mustn't have heard of them either . She said she didn't know, but it was clearly the house style of mags such as Take A Break and the other 'true story' publications that pay people £200 to have their stories ghost-written by staffers who write to a formula.

Perhaps because we should never start a sentence with I!

spabbygirl DH apparently drove his mother crackers because, from an early age, he would take things to pieces to see how they worked. But he always put then back together again.

When did you last work out a quadratic equation?

I thought I'd do one for fun this afternoon but then I fell asleep 🤔

Hetty58
Fractions and percentages - I forgot those, something we learnt at primary school, but continued at senior school.

Long division and long multiplication - all instilled in us by age 11!

I think that is a great idea, I've had to explain to others how interest rates work, what an exchange rate is, how credit interest works. I've fostered loads of young people and many of them got into debt as they were offered cards and had no idea about how they worked and as a result built up a huge bill, often they thought that the card company had worked out that they could afford it so they went out and spent. I think relating as many lessons as possible to real life is a great idea, I read a while ago in Finland, I think it was, that young people are regularly taught in a practical way, for example taking apart a radio etc to see the way it worked. I am really impressed with Labour, I just want them in power now, especially the bit about chasing up the money Sunak has written of for PPE contracts etc.

As a maths teacher, I'd like to know if Labour has
▪︎talked to the associations for teaching maths in UK
▪︎talked to any Primary Maths Specialists
▪︎looked at any research on improving UK primary maths
▪︎looked at international data and research so we might hear of useful ideas from other countries

My experience in secondary education is no to each.
Btw I'm exceptionally impressed with DGD's KS1 mental arithmetic skills.

Yes, I imagine I was too.

I still don't know why that construction seems to be given so much weight, though. It is a style favoured by cheap magazines :
'Hanging out the washing, I caught sight of my toyboy groping my sister.' or 'Switching on the TV, I was surprised to see my husband on Crimewatch waving my kitchen knife in the Post Office.'

Maybe the writers have all been taught that fronted adverbials are the way ahead? I once did a course on writing for magazines, and asked why the stories so often started in that manner. The woman running it was older than me, and mustn't have heard of them either . She said she didn't know, but it was clearly the house style of mags such as Take A Break and the other 'true story' publications that pay people £200 to have their stories ghost-written by staffers who write to a formula.

I'm all for teaching a thorough understanding of the basics. So many of the college and adult learners I taught had simply memorised methods/formulas/rules but didn't have a clue how they worked, what they were - or even why they needed them. That common fear of maths - as they didn't understand it - demonstrated the failure of schools.

Often they knew quite a lot but hadn't transferred that from one situation to another. They'd 'know' percentages, from shopping (those shoes with 20% off) for instance - yet still hadn't realised that a percentage was simply something divided by 100. They knew money - but were scared of numbers.

We ended up doing a lot of drawing concepts, weighing on scales, right back to using counters. They were fascinated by a grid I printed - showing some equivalent decimals, fractions, percentages, ratios etc. and they filled in the rest. One girl saw/knew numbers as bright colours.

M0nica's thoughts are spot on, yet we had no funding for the really important lessons, so our informal discussions were based around those concepts. Other stuff, funded and on the curriculum, seemed utterly pointless. When did you last work out a quadratic equation?

I went to secondary school in the 1960s, when grammar was taught and the O level English exam paper specifically included a question on some aspect of grammar - and I have never heard of 'fronted adverbials.

Having looked it up I would imagine we were simply taught about 'using an adverb at the start of a sentence'

‘^English was OK, Mum, but I did really craply at maths^.’ 😂

I hope you pointed out that craply is an adverb rather than a fronted adverbial

I'm saving that for another time 😂

Not sure how they got away with that Calistemon2
Information
The multiplication tables check (MTC) is statutory for all year 4 pupils registered at state-funded maintained schools, special schools or academies (including free schools) in England.

We're in Wales. The curriculum may have been made more rigorous recently and of course, they had Covid to contend with too. There are no SATS in Wales.

It's a long time since DD was at primary school in England and they did pay lip service to times tables by putting little bits of times tables randomly around the walls, eg 5 x 6 = 30, 8 x8 = 64, 7x 5 = 35 etc and said the children could absorb the tables that way. 🤔

SueDonim Many of these subjects are already on the school curriculum - cookery, sex education and humanbiology, as pointed out budgeting etc is maths, but they are scattered althrough other subjects.

By gathering them together and having a coherent syllabus that runs from 5 - 18, it should not add to the curriculum. Life skills can them become an examinable subject with GCSEs and A levels(or be a co pulsory part of Rishi's school leaving plans.

It would not add to the curriculum just ratioalise it and link bits together

Talking of adverbs, I was once perversely chuffed with dd2, who at maybe 10 had been doing end of term tests at school.

‘So how did you get on?’ sez I.

‘English was OK, Mum, but I did really craply at maths.’ 😂

Callistemon. The answer, of course, is that SueDonim was wearing them.

Mollygo your 11:35 post with examples of front adverbials has made me realise why some modern fiction writing seems so contrived. It’s trying too hard to be different. You only need to read someone like Rose Tremain, Hilary Mantel or William Boyd to find out how to write beautiful but natural prose.