Do children in my maths group think
different maths topics are easy,
appropriate or hard?
By Joe Rogers
Introduction
O 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 analysis
O 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 chart
Maths topics
Time
Adding/subtracting
Too easy
Appropriate
ll
lllll
ll
Multiplying
ll
lll
Dividing
l
ll
Angles
lll
Patterns
l
Shapes
l
Algebra
Too hard
l
Perimeter
ll
l
l
l
Area
ll
Decimals
l
Fractions
l
Mental maths
Percentages
l
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.