Do children in my maths group think different maths topics are

easy, appropriate or hard?

By Joe Rogers

IntroductionO My name is Joe Rogers.O My question is: do children in my maths group

think different maths topics are easy, appropriate or hard?

O I chose this question because I found parts of maths easy and some hard and I wanted to find out what other people think and their opinions.

O My group consists of only of children from year 5. I am in the top class, on the highest table, all of my results came from my table.

O This is how I got my answers.

Planning my research and ethics

O I started by working out what method I should use to find my answers.

O I chose questionnaires as my method and I started to think of questions I should use.

O I made questionnaires so my research participants are anonymous so I did not know who wrote what on the questionnaires.

O I kept my data confidential so no-one knew who my data was from.

My questionnaires and data collection

O My questionnaires had 6 questions.O All of the questions were open-ended

questions except question 1.O I gave my questionnaires to the nine other

people in my group. There was 5 girls and 4 boys.

O All of them filled in the sheet and returned it to me within 1-20 minutes.

O The person who took 1 minute rushed so he could get to play football.

Data analysisO I analysed my data by comparing the answers

and finding similarities.O To do this I made a tally chart of each

question. O Here is a chart of question 3.

Tally chartMaths topics Too easy Appropriate Too hard

Time ll

Adding/subtracting lllll ll

Multiplying ll lll

Dividing l ll

Angles lll ll

Patterns l

Shapes l

Algebra l l

Perimeter l l

Area ll

Decimals l

Fractions l

Mental maths l Percentages l

My findings based on the tally chart

O I found out that most people found adding and subtracting too easy and would like it to be more challenging.

O I also found out that the topics that people found hard were area, perimeter, angles, decimals and fractions.

O People thought that multiplying, dividing and angles were appropriate, although two people found angles too hard.

My findings from answers to questions 2,4,5 and 6.

O Most people said that they wouldn’t change anything about the difficulty of the Maths work.

O Most people said that they found some topics hard and some easy, but were happy with that.

O Some people said that they enjoyed being challenged and some said that they would like to do more group and pair work.

Conclusion O To conclude I found out that out of the 9 people

I asked, most of the found maths easy. O If I had to do this again, I would use more closed

questions, as it was to hard to interpret my data with open questions, I would also use a graph, such as a bar chart to analysis data, as a tally chart is to confusing.

O Also I would use a bigger sample size, for example my whole class or the whole of year 5, with a range of ability, as I only asked able children.