Homework Help

[greendollar]

My 11yr old daughter is revising for her sats & I'm trying to help her but there is a question that is most probably very easy but it just makes my head hurt when I think about it .

Question ;

Ben thinks of a number .

He adds half of the number to a quarter of the number , the result is 60 .

What was the number Ben first thought of ?

Answer ?

[Deleted]

80

80 divided by 2 = 40
80 divided by 4 = 20

40 + 20 = 60

[Roscopecotrain]

yep i get 80 as well. 1 half and 1 quarter = 3 quarters which equals 60. 60 divided by 3 (3 quarters) = 20 20 x 4 (4 quarters whole) = 80

[Karma]

The point of revising isn't to just come up with the correct answer but to understand why the answer is correct

Perhaps review some of your daughter's earlier work where they have solved problems like this before.

[Fagsareus]

Yip me too
3/4 x = 60
X = 60 x4 /3
X = 80

[Roscopecotrain]

Mummy Karma

[beautycat]

80 is the answer I hate this type of question, very hard to explain also the ones that work backwards, although they are easy to explain.

Don't let you daughter worry about sats, senior schools don't tend to use the levels and they are retested when they start, some children do fantastically well in class but don't cope well in tests, so some of it is teacher assessed now, mainly literacy

[Karma]

May 9, 2013 18:13:37 GMT Roscopecotrain said:

Mummy Karma

I know 

Can't help myself 

It is important though in Maths that kids know how they got the answer.  

You can get the answer wrong, but if you show all the workings in a logical fashion,you will still get good marks for a wrong answer

and if a kid can't understand at all, then it's back to the teacher!  They're the ones that are supposed to be teaching our children, not the parents!

[beautycat]

I agree, back to teachers , x

[dave]

Dead right Karma. I spent a good few years teaching maths related stuff to the end products of schools and the lack of basic mathematical understanding was noticeable in quite a few of them. Having said that, teaching basic maths is not easy and many schools have a hard time getting decent maths staff.

[Karma]

May 9, 2013 18:37:46 GMT beautycat said:

I agree, back to teachers , x

Indeed!

I went into Primary school when my daughter was about 11 as I couldn't help her with subtraction or long division as they were doing it differently to how I was taught!

It was her teacher who told me that my job was to support her doing homework but her job to teach.  She told me that I could be doing my daughter a disservice by trying to show her my ways of calculating things.  This teacher said that homework is to check that the kids understand, if the homework comes back wrong then the teacher can see what work needs to be done!

[chrisjw]

S'cuse me Miss........if I get it wrong, is there detention?..........

[Karma]

May 9, 2013 18:42:59 GMT dave said:

Dead right Karma. I spent a good few years teaching maths related stuff to the end products of schools and the lack of basic mathematical understanding was noticeable in quite a few of them. Having said that, teaching basic maths is not easy and many schools have a hard time getting decent maths staff.

Some people are just wired Mathematically and some aren't!

DS is off to Uni to study pure Maths in September     He didn't get that from me, I still can't work out why I'm overdrawn most months 

[beautycat]

May 9, 2013 18:44:29 GMT Karma said:

May 9, 2013 18:37:46 GMT beautycat said:

I agree, back to teachers , x

Indeed!

I went into Primary school when my daughter was about 11 as I couldn't help her with subtraction or long division as they were doing it differently to how I was taught!

It was her teacher who told me that my job was to support her doing homework but her job to teach.  She told me that I could be doing my daughter a disservice by trying to show her my ways of calculating things.  This teacher said that homework is to check that the kids understand, if the homework comes back wrong then the teacher can see what work needs to be done!

That is how it should be

[Karma]

May 9, 2013 18:50:00 GMT chrisjw said:

S'cuse me Miss........if I get it wrong, is there detention?..........

Where is that whip smiley 


Perpetua   jess    help, Chris wants whipped