Year 4 homework

Pentagon = 0
Plus symbol = 4
Diamond = 5

?

I worked it out but it is tricky, especially for an 8 year old. I was a primary teacher in my former life but rarely taught maths. I stuck to spelling and IT but felt quite pleased with myself at getting this!

Well if set with no previous examples then it’s daft !

Not a clue!

Isn't this where worksheets and online learning falls down? The real life teacher would have seen to it that the pupils had understood the concept first.

Where’s Marydoll ... ?

Thank goodness Other Granny was locked down with them to help with DGD's Y3/4 homework which sounded similar.
+×÷=%°
?

Lucca

Well if set with no previous examples then it’s daft !

I need to see the whole page

It's not a proper magic square, is it?

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

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!

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?

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!

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

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)?

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

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.

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

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

Ellianne that’s a bit like this...

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

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.

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.

Ellianne that's smacked my gob!

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

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.