One of a number of tried and tested technique for teaching work that students learners find hard to learn found in teaching tricks and tips
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Our experience is that "no calculator word problems" are one of the areas that low attaining students learners in KS4 are less likely to "have a go at" probably because they have been "failing" at these problems for longest. We have found that building up students learners confidence in their teacher and their numeracy skills through "harder looking" maths such as % and percentage NC - pdf & mp4, place value: integer and standard form - pdf & mp4 can reduce shame.
So for KS4 students learners beginning timely practice first build up trust and student learner confidence (through students learners experiencing that they get most of their timely practice assignment questions correct).
Teachers can then look to add for example best value or can introduce the very simplest questions from add NC, subtract NC, multiply - pdf & mp4, divide - pdf & mp4 The teacher can offer the possibility that "perhaps it is not that students learners can't do +, - x and ÷ but that they can't recognise which operation to choose". This somehow shifts the shame; suddenly it's not the fault of the student learner who hasn't been able to learn these skills for 7 or more years, now it is the fault of (I usually like to blame the national curriculum here - if a scapegoat needs to be found) for having not given the students learners enough opportunity to know which operation to use.
Our topics add NC, subtract NC, multiply - pdf & mp4, divide - pdf & mp4 are also designed so that it is hard to see how hard the questions are from a casual glance, and because of retrieval practice or spaced learning any student learner might find the odd very easy question in their timely practice assignment - in both these ways the potential to feel shame is reduced. Since each topic is so finely divided into strands (see scaffolding) students learners can begin to build up their "forgotten or never learned" numeracy skills a bit at a time, in a safe environment. Once teachers are using mastery learning to teach numeracy skills studentslearners, especially KS4 studentslearners, often rapidly improve their numeracy skills. (Perhaps because KS4 students learners have a number of partially learned strategies).
I have also found, that once students learners have begun their timely practice "4 operations journey", it is easy to reassure students learners who "get stuck" in another question due to a lack of numeracy skills, by saying "Thats OK, I haven't taught you how to multiply a 3 digit number by a two digit number yet ..." again I move the blame away from the student learner "... you are working on multiplying two digit numbers by two digit numbers at the moment". However with the reduce numerical demands (initially) way that topics are divided into strands this happens a lot less often than with using questions found in a text book, on the internet or from past exam questions.
With the increasing emphasis on problem solving, the wide variety of questions a student learner will be unable to answer in a no calculator paper without sufficient numeracy skills and the debilitating nature of shame, it is important that we do slowly but surely improve a students learners numeracy skills.
The plan for this page is to build up a set of examples and include links to "teaching Higher work to Foundation studentslearners" videos and more easy on the eye student learner "remind-me" videos. These videos are already recorded, they just need to be reformatted so they will be small enough to load here.
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