Through my reading go ‘Mathematics Explained for Primary Teachers (Haycock, D.) it was clear to see that is absolutely essential to understand the maths you are teaching because if you do not then you can not expect the children to fully understand it.

This helps me put my mind at ease after years of worrying that everyone else in my class could do maths yet I still struggled despite my genuine efforts. However it seems my classmates and I fell under the spell of rote learning and simply memorised the rules of how to do maths calculations rather than understanding how to do maths calculations.

In the few months before my National 5 Maths examination I did all the past papers a few times and this evidenced my rote learning as I learnt the rules for each question. Although, to be able to use these rules I had to understand what rules the question was asking of me and so I finally realised that for the first time in my life I had begun to understand mathematics.

After not doing Maths since National 5 I am anxious to have to stand in front of a classroom and teach it but after seeing how well I could do maths after working very hard I know that I will just have to put the same amount of dedication in to be able to teach and understand primary school mathematics.