Maths Blog

Maths board game: Four Stars

Peter — Fri, 18 May 2012 04:00:59 +0000

I shall be publishing some fantastic strategy games over the next few weeks which can really help children develop their logical thinking and predicting what will happen. This is a great little game that does not need a lot of equipment and only takes a short time to play, but can get quite addictive. It’s [...]

Resource of the Week: Long division

Peter — Wed, 16 May 2012 04:00:18 +0000

If there is one thing which really proves to be tricky for primary school children it is long division. In fact there have been calls for it to be abandoned with the calculator taking over. However, if children do grasp the method they can get great satisfaction from working their way carefully through the method [...]

Year 3 Mental Arithmetic: Sets 57 and 58

Peter — Mon, 14 May 2012 04:00:12 +0000

We will soon be coming to the end of our sets of mental arithmetic questions for year 3, with just three more sets after these. Today the emphasis is on addition skills as well as a little subtraction. The questions include: adding a single digit to a 3-digit number in the context of money: e.g. [...]

Resource of the Week: decimal fractions

Peter — Fri, 11 May 2012 04:00:33 +0000

Some children have difficulty realising that the same numbers can be written in different ways, especially when dealing with decimals and decimal fractions. This page is a good test of understanding, probably most suited for year 5 children (/10 yrs old). 0.23 can be read as 23 hundredths or 2 tenths and 3 hundredths. As [...]

Maths worksheet: ordering amounts of money

Peter — Wed, 09 May 2012 04:00:16 +0000

Children in the Early Years get plenty of opportunity to handle coins and work on ordering small amounts of money. Yet, when children get older and the numbers get larger this is a concept which is often not practised in school. So here we have a maths worksheet which looks specifically at ordering 2-digit amounts [...]

Year 3 mental arithmetic: sets 55 and 56

Peter — Mon, 07 May 2012 04:00:18 +0000

Two more sets of ten questions which add to the great collection now available for year 3 children. This week there are some tricky questions which must be listened to carefully if the correct answer is to be worked out. For example: ’8 added to a number is 37. What is the number?’ The danger [...]

Counting on in steps of 10p

Peter — Fri, 04 May 2012 04:00:23 +0000

This page looks at the way money and coins can be used with helping to count on in tens. The questions become progressively more difficult and this would be most suitable for year 3 children as well as year 2 children who are confident with counting in tens. The first three questions look at adding [...]

Resource of the Week: subtraction across the thousands boundary

Peter — Wed, 02 May 2012 04:00:51 +0000

This Year 4 maths worksheet can reveal a great deal about how children deal with numbers. It looks at finding differences crossing the thousands boundary. Let’s look at 3005 – 8 which is easier to do mentally than on paper. There are several ways that this can be done. 1. Count down, one at a [...]

Year 3 mental arithmetic: sets 53 and 54

Peter — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 04:00:06 +0000

I continue on with the weekly sets of mental arithmetic for Year 3. This week the questions concentrate on addition and subtraction, including adding three numbers ‘in your head’. Both the first two questions are designed so that pairs that make 10 can be spotted e.g. 11 + 8 + 9, where the easiest way [...]

Resource of the week: change from ten pence

Peter — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 04:00:57 +0000

Using coins is a vital part of understanding number as it provides concrete examples of numbers in action. It is a really good idea to have a set of coins that can be counted out and swapped e.g. 5 one pence coins exchanged for a 5p piece etc. Why not set up a little shop [...]