Mental Arithmetic :(

[MathsNerd203]

I just did my first Methods 1/2 test and did pretty badly...

It's not that it was a hard test or anything. I understood all the concepts; my mental arithmetic was  the problem...

How can I improve in this area, that is get faster at doing problems without a calculator?

Has anyone else got to Year 11 and realized they needed to improve in basic Maths skills?

[keltingmeith]

One of my students from last year had similar issues, and managed to get a 33 in spec and 37 in methods, so you can definitely overcome this. What he did was used the arithmetic practices available on Khan academy, and I think he just did those constantly until he got better.

Honestly, improving arithmetic is like trying to improve handwriting - you've gotta just do a little bit consistently, and you'll slowly get better at it. I suggest sitting down for about 10 minutes every night, sitting with a bunch of arithmetic questions in front of you, and just going through them. If you wake up to an alarm, you can try switching to an alarm app from a smartphone - a fair few of these have a "maths snooze" option, which means you can only snooze/turn off the alarm after you've correctly answered an arithmetic problem. If you catch public transport by yourself, you could just carry around a notepad with questions on them, and answer them on the travel time (note: I do not suggest doing this if you use travel time as a cool down, as I did in high school and now). Just find time every day to do some practice.