Horrid maths: how to tackle the 5 trickiest topics

Steph Rhodes helps make the 5 trickiest maths topics less terrifying, whether your pupils are creeped out by converting measures or frightened by fractions!

We’ve all been there; you look at the maths overview and see it… that one topic that makes your heart drop; the one that makes you go “noooo”; the one that goes “BOO!” and surprises you!

I’m here to share the top 5 horrid maths topics that give pupils the creeps, and give you some fun, interactive and useful activities you could use to tackle them without fear!

5 horrid maths topics (and how to handle them)

As maths lead and year 6 teacher, I know the importance of tackling these tricky topics in a clear and accessible way, so the children don't get discouraged. Let’s start with the spookiest of the maths scaries.

1. Time

DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN. Time will always come out as the ONE thing that teachers dread teaching the most. We’ve all been there! Is it because we now have a reliance on digital clocks that children find it hard to read analogue clocks? Is it because we already have this pre-supposed angst around it? Who knows! Here are some timely recommendations.

Make it part of your daily routine: Can you incorporate telling the time during the day? At random intervals, ask the children what time it is. Before break? Before lunch? If your class are confident time tellers, start thinking about introducing durations: ‘you have 15 minutes, what time will it be when we finish? Break time is at 10:45, how long do we have until then?’
Label your clock: ensure your class clock is visible to everyone and add the time labels to it (this might be the minutes/the words or both). This will encourage children to think about the time when they look at the clock.
Time teller: get a cheap watch (or ask school to get you a cheap watch if you can) and make one of your children the ‘time teller’ for the day. Every now and again, ask that child for the time. This has been something I’ve done in the past and it helped greatly for confident and not-so-confident time tellers.
Retrieval: if you start your lesson with a retrieval session, make reading a clock/drawing a clock part of this every day. This can be a really simple thing to implement and can have such a big impact (I did this last year and after a while, confidence skyrocketed!)

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2. Reading timetables

We all know that reading timetables can be a tricky thing to get used to… but I think this is something that, if done properly, can be really fun.

TV schedules: get a copy of a TV schedule and tell the kids to plan their night of television. This will make them think about the fact they can’t be watching 2 channels at once or 2 TV shows at once.
24-hour clock: make sure this is really embedded. Look at the patterns between the 12 hour clock and the 24-hour clock. Have this labelled and up on your classroom clock! Make it part of your routine, where the children must think about the afternoon times in 24-hour format.
Plan a trip somewhere: one of my favourite activities is to give the children bus timetables and train timetables and tell them they have to get me from one place to another using both a bus and a train. You can extend this to looking at plane timetables (imagine they’re planning a holiday). This is even better if they’re actual timetables. It also leads quite nicely to looking at durations/waiting times!

3. Converting measures

This is something that children find hard to do if they don’t have a solid knowledge of place value, so ensure this is in place first. We all get to that “convert between ml and l” lesson and think “whyyyyy?” Here’s a few things that might just help!

Teach the prefix meanings: I think when we teach converting measures, we need to spend a little more time looking at the roots of the words. If children know that milli- means 1000, and centi- means 100, then this gets a lot easier.
Measure, measure, measure: get children measuring with a whole range of different things with a whole range of different implements: 30cm rulers, 15cm rulers, a trundle wheel, a metre stick. If children are measuring accurately, they’ll be able to think about appropriate and inappropriate measures.
Get cooking: this is especially useful when thinking about converting masses and capacities. You might not actually get to the physical cooking, but it’s great for getting children to think proportionately. Get out the measuring jugs from your science area and get children measuring. Children will begin to think ‘if one bag of flour is 1kg and you need 3kg, how many bags is that?’ This same logic goes for bottles of liquid etc. Children love when they’ve got a prop to look at.

4. Fractions, decimals, percentages

Year 5 and 6 teachers in particular - this one will give you a chill up your spine! I’ve been there; it’s hard. For me, FDP is all about the visuals. The more the children see it and the more they talk about it, the easier it gets.

Go back to basics: look at halves, quarters, thirds, tenths of circles, squares, rectangles, triangles. Get the children thinking about how much of a part of something else you have. Once they can clearly and confidently do that, then give that something a value. Start small. One circle represents 10, what does half of it show? 5/10. One circle now represents 100, what does half of it show? 50/100.
Representations: it’s crucial for the children to understand that 1/10 is the same as 10%, and for you to explain WHY. This can be done by showing them lots of different representations of FDP and asking them to say why they are (or aren’t) the same. Using non-examples as well as examples is so important.
Times table games: if your pupils aren’t hot on their times tables, make this part of your lessons! Children who know their tables can think proportionately so much better. There are loads of different times table games you can play: bingo, times table relays, King/Queen of the Classroom (children go head to head on times tables questions and quick fire; king/queen is whoever the winner is after everyone has been).

5. Angles

Is this something I’ve hidden away from sometimes because it’s hard? Oh yes. But there are ways to make measuring angles (using a protractor in particular) fun and interactive.

Go on an angle hunt: go outside onto your yard/walk through your school grounds and look for angles in the wild. What kind of angle can the children see in the playground? The ridge of the roof? Children need to be able to identify them before they can even start to think about measuring them. Keep these things handy for an upcoming suggestion!
Play guessing games: get children looking at angles and guessing how large they are. If they are confident enough with what an angle SHOULD be, they can start to make educated guesses. (I tend to play the child who has all of the misconceptions about angles and says a wildly wrong answer to see who REALLY knows what they’re talking about). You can also play with this by getting the kids to draw an angle of a given amount. (My classes have always loved this… we tend to turn those angles into something once we’ve had a chat about them!)
Get measuring: yes, it’s time to finally pull out the protractors. Model, model, model. You show them; they have a go. It’s not a skill that comes naturally. Children need to see the protractors being used and have a go themselves; let them have a play with them! Remember those angles they found in the wild? Take a picture of them and see if children can have a go at measuring them! Your class should now be super confident at guessing the size of angles, so measuring them with these estimating skills will come slightly easier.

Whilst these topics may give you a fright as they come around, it’s crucial we get it right! Lots of these things are tackled with repetition, little and often - the drip, drip, drip as my old head used to say. Giving children these skills can go on to help them massively in all walks of life: future footballers thinking about trajectories, future architects, future teachers… you never know who is right in front of you waiting to be inspired!

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