Oak Tutoring Partners - KS2 Maths Specialists

KS2 maths tuition with a proven track record.

We help your child to:

🎯Learn in a safe, supportive and ambitious environment.

🎯Build strong mathematical foundations to support current and future learning.

🎯Develop maths confidence and competence.

🎯Make excellent progress which is reflected in their school lessons.

🎯Learn techniques to takes SATs tests and other assessments in their stride.

Drop us a message to find out more. 🙂

Fi and Shaun

*** CLOSES 10th APRIL 2024 ***

CONVERTING MIXED NUMBERS AND IMPROPER FRACTIONS

Here is one of our Year 5s demonstrating his ability to convert mixed numbers to improper fractions and vice versa,

This skill will stand him in good stead when he comes to add and subtract fractions that involve mixed numbers and improper fractions towards the end of Year 5 and in Year 6.

To get to this, we've had the Numicon and pegs out and practised drawing improper fractions and mixed numbers.

We break maths down into small steps and practise, build and develop them over time.

FOUR OPERATIONS WITH VOCABULARY

Although our main focus is arithmetic, we believe it is very important for children to develop a solid understanding of mathematical vocabulary.

When children are ready, we add in a layer of complexity by exposing children to vocabulary that will help them with their reasoning and general understanding.

KS2 maths tuition with a proven track record.

We help your child to:

🎯Learn in a safe, supportive and ambitious environment.

🎯Build strong mathematical foundations to support current and future learning.

🎯Develop maths confidence and competence.

🎯Make excellent progress which is reflected in their school lessons.

🎯Learn techniques to takes SATs tests and other assessments in their stride.

Drop us a message to find out more. :-)

Fi and Shaun

CLOSES 10th APRIL 2024

ADDING AND SUBTRACTING FRACTIONS

Check this out!

Two of our Year 6s smashing adding and subtracting fractions, including using mixed numbers and improper fractions.

We're so proud!

ROUNDING TO 1000

Inspired by Power Up Tuition 's post on March 13th.

She's right - rounding can be quite a dull topic but it's also an important skill.

The children enjoyed this added competitive element and we enjoyed the discussion it created and the misconceptions it highlighted.

Thank you, Claire :-)

ESSENTIAL MENTAL SKILLS

We have a list of around fifteen maths skills that we consider to be the 'building blocks' of maths skills.

In our opinion, most other maths, both written and mental, flows from these skills so we put a lot of time and effort into teaching, practising and revisiting them until the children are fluent and confident. We do this because mastering these skills make new and more complex maths easier to learn. It also gives the children a real sense of accomplishment.

Today we revisited:

* multiplying and dividing by 10, 100 and 1000.
* rounding

It is always great to see children grow in confidence and skills. We will keep revisiting these topics until children can't get them wrong.

DIVIDING BY 2-DIGIT DIVISORS (LONG DIVISION)

This is one of the topics most children (and adults) find difficult as there are so many 'moving parts' to it. So P blew us away with this work - he has struggled with long division for a while.

He wasn't sure how to find the times tables for a 2-digit number so we showed him using a partitioning method. This is the method that most children, in our experience, find the most comfortable/ easiest to use.

He then performed the division calculation (it helped enormously that P's ability to take away in his head is generally strong) and checked it using the inverse (multiplication).

He was very pleased with himself and rightly so!

We break arithmetic down into small steps and practice regularly for accuracy and confidence.

PRIME FACTORS OF COMPOSITE NUMBERS

We think it is good for children to see there are often different ways of getting to an answer. First we focus on accuracy and then on efficiency.

In this case, we explored different ways of finding prime factors of the same number by drawing factor trees.

While doing this activity, children naturally get to apply their times tables and knowledge of divisibility rules, prime numbers and square and cube numbers.

Why was the maths book sad? 😉



👇👇👇

How would you explain how to answer this?

Seems a simple enough question but requires children to:

a) Know or calculate (from the information about the cat) that there are 24 hours in a day.

b) Simplify 18/24 to 3/4.

c) Know or calculate 3/4 as a percentage.

(Maths SATs 2017, Paper 2, Q18)

EQUIVALENT FRACTIONS, PERCENTAGES AND DECIMALS (FPD)

Our younger children were challenged to find equivalent pairs from the 37 cards and identify the card without a pair.

A good understanding of FPD becomes increasingly complex and important as the children progress through the national curriculum so it is important that concepts are revisited regularly to build familiarity and confidence.

We regularly teach FPD using written methods but, where it suits, we like to introduce a game.

HALVING

In a recent session, we looked at halving with some Y4 and Y5 tutees. It's a skill that seems simple to most adults but lots of children find it tricky.

There were two main learning parts to this skill:

1) Children familiarising themselves with different words and phrases that mean 'find half of...'. For example: 50%, x0.5, divide by 2 etc,

2) Children developing the skill of being able to partition numbers they can't halve mentally into numbers they can halve mentally and then adding the results together.

It is always interesting to see the different ways children choose to partition a given number. It is also fascinating to see how their choices change as they develop confidence.

We think it is important for children to develop a conceptual understanding of this skill before defaulting to bar division.

Recently, we have had a few enquiries from parents whose children are working at a level that is not quite the right for fit our group model because the child needs to be working on something higher or lower to where our group model is pitched.

It is important to us to preserve the integrity of our group offer so it is equitable to all children in the group. If we don't think our groups can have a significant impact on your child, we will tell you. Parents have been grateful for our candour and we were happy to signpost to other avenues.

We understand that choosing a tutor and the type of tuition for your child is a very personal decision. It is also an important one.

So, here's a reminder of some things to think about when choosing a maths tutor.

Fi and Shaun

Equivalent Fractions and Simplifying Fractions - a great way to practise times table knowledge.

A thorough knowledge of equivalence and simplification also makes working with fractions a piece of 🍰

We can not stress how important getting these foundational skills in place are. They will do lots of the mathematical heavy-lifting later.💪

It's been fabulous to see an increase in enquiries from Y4 and Y5 parents over the last week.

The reason we are so pleased by this is because this is where we can have an incredible impact because of the continuing effects of time after a child acquires a strong foundation of the basics.

Just like food continues to cook after the heat source is removed, children who have great foundations in maths continue to acquire knowledge and skills at a greater rate than those who do not.

Consider two cases:

a) Child A has 9 months tutoring in Year 6 right up to SATs, for example.

b) Child B has 9 months tutoring in Year 5 and then stops.

Both will have a positive impact but which do you think will see the greatest cumulative impact, measured at the end of Y6?

It is a huge buzz for us as tutors to see children learn new skills and grow in confidence. This child had struggled with short division previously and was thrilled to complete these short division questions unaided.

She chose to write the times tables out and we applaud her for doing so. Eventually, she will feel so confident with her times tables she will not need to write them out. But for now, writing them out acts as a self-scaffold that relieves her cognitive load enough for her to focus on the actual calculation. We love seeing the steps on these journeys to fluency.

She will do lots of practice in the coming weeks so she can move onto dividing by two-digit divisors in a month or so.

The strip of paper is mixed mental arithmetic practice that gives the children in the group practice and allows us to assess their next steps. The children in this group struggled with dividing fractions (Q15) and questions like 2.1/3 (Q20) - this gives us very useful assessment information for what we need to teach to the group and things we need to teach to individual children.

A while back, we had an interesting question about our approach to tutoring maths during our small group in-person sessions.

It was a great questions that made us think hard about how we could explain our approach succinctly.

Here is the essence of our approach. Do get in touch if you would like to find out more.

Fi and Shaun

This child was already proficient at multiplying fractions but wasn't sure about dividing fractions.

The💡moment for this child was learning how to express a whole number as a fraction by putting it over one. Once he got that, he took to dividing fractions like a🦆to water.

This is an example of one of the steps we put in place before children are shown how to employ the shortcutcut method seen here: https://www.facebook.com/OakTutoring/videos/374198775118728

As always, we'll practise this skill a few more times to make sure it doesn't get forgotten.

Show us how you solved it. 💡

👇👇👇

Ratio:

Fi had a trip to B&Q a couple of weeks ago to buy some custom-mixed paint.

This trip inspired part of our introduction to ratio for the Y6 group.

Ratio is a Y6 topic on the National Curriculum and many children, at first, find the concept difficult. So we start with manipulatives (in this case, multi-cubes) to support the concept before moving on to pictorial representations and abstract calculations.

❓ Questions for Parents and Carers to Think About When Choosing a Tutor:

👉 In what ways do I want my child to benefit from tutoring and what outcomes am I looking for?

👉 Do I think my child will ‘gel’ with the tutor?

👉 Am I comfortable with what the tutor tells me about themselves, their set up and their terms and conditions?

👉 Does the tutor have good pedagogical knowledge as well as good subject knowledge?

👉 What sort of experience and qualifications do I want the tutor to have?

👉 Is the tutor a ‘jack of all trades’ or specialised?

👉 Which is the best fit for my child and my family: face-to-face or online tutoring?

👉 Small group tuition or individual tutoring?

👉 Am I happy to travel to a third party venue, the tutor’s home or do I want the tutor to come to my house?

👉 Am I willing to commit to a block of lessons or do I want ad-hoc sessions?

👉 In my opinion does the tutor provide good value for money?

Send us a message if you'd like to find out more.

Shaun and Fi

Send a message to learn more

This mental arithmetic activity really made our Y5 children think - you could hear the cogs in their brains turning! ⚙️⚙️⚙️

It combines their times tables knowledge with multiplying by decimals and multiples of 10 and 100. A really good skill for developing number sense.

As always, the questions start of easier and get progressively more difficult.

It threw up lots of mistakes and misconceptions we could address immediately so the children could have a go at correcting their mistakes. 💪🚀

KS2 maths tuition with a proven track record.

We help your child to:

🎯Learn in a safe, supportive and ambitious environment.

🎯Build strong mathematical foundations to support current and future learning.

🎯Develop maths confidence and competence.

🎯Make excellent progress which is reflected in their school lessons.

🎯Learn techniques to takes SATs tests and other assessments in their stride.

Drop us a message to find out more. :-)

Fi and Shaun

OFFER PRICE CLOSES 31st JANUARY 2024

Busy couple of weeks for this little one:
Her first experience of snow❄️
Her first Christmas🎄
Her first times table test
And now, she's getting ready for her first New Year!🎉🎈

🎁🎉🎁 ANNOUNCEMENT 🎁🎉🎁

📣 We're expanding! 🎉(but only our locations and number of sessions - NOT OUR GROUP SIZES!)

💬 Send us a message to register your interest in KS2 maths tuition with proven success.

From January 2️⃣0️⃣2️⃣4️⃣, we offer great value, face-to-face, small group maths tuition at venues local to:

* Bakersfield and Sneinton

* Woodthorpe and Arnold

* Mapperley and Mapperley Park

* Sherwood and Carrington

💡In the meantime, here is a little puzzle for when you start your Christmas break. :-)
(HINT: Squares and rectangles can be any size and different sizes).

🎅 We, Shaun and Fi, wish you and your family a very joyful and merry Christmas. 🎄