reduce shame in order to teach the 4 operations

One of a number of tried and tested technique for teaching work that learners find hard to learn found in teaching tricks and tips

Our topics add NC, subtract NC, multiply NC and divide NC are all presented as word problems and involve only one stage of problem solving, these - as their title would suggest - are intended to be solved without a calculator. 

Our experience is that "no calculator word problems" are one of the areas that low attaining 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 learners confidence in their teacher and their numeracy skills through "harder looking" maths such as percentOF and standard form can reduce shame.

So for KS4 learners beginning timely practice first build up trust and learner confidence (through 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 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 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 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 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) 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 learners, especially KS4 learners, often rapidly improve their numeracy skills. (Perhaps because KS4 learners have a number of partially learned strategies). 

I have also found, that once learners have begun their timely practice "4 operations journey", it is easy to reassure 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 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 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 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 learners" videos and more easy on the eye learner "remind-me" videos. These videos are already recorded, they just need to be reformatted so they will be small enough to load here. 

is it a multiply question

x 2 trick

x 3 trick

x 4 trick

x 5 trick 

x 6 trick

x 7 trick

x 8 trick

x 9 trick 

divide 5Q

divide by 2

divide by 10

divide double digit