Free Year 3 Maths Worksheets

This week’s mental arithmetic for year 3 looks at place value, number sequences and patterns as well as some quick addition.

One of the early questions asks what’s the largest number that can be made from the digits 2, 5 and 4. This is partly an ordering skill, making sure the largest digit is in the hundreds, second largest in the tens and smallest in the units. Some children find it quite difficult to retain three digits in their head and then manipulate them.

To find the next number in a sequence requires several skills. Firstly to listen carefully to the numbers, then to work out the pattern or rule and as to what is happening from one number to the next and thirdly to work out what the next number will be. These questions are kept at a fairly simple level and are all addition patterns.

There are also a couple of ‘odd number’ questions to check that children know about odd numbers.

Year 3 mental arithmetic: (sets 33 and 34)

This week the questions are all in the form of word problems. Generally children find these harder than just ‘sums’ because they are not told what operation needs to be carried out to reach the correct answer. Indeed, sometimes it can be tricky. Looking at the question,

‘I think of a number and subtract 10. The answer is 27. What is my number?’

Immediately the word subtraction will come to mind as it is used in the question. But, in fact, an addition has to be done to find the correct answer.

Several questions also require a good knowledge of the 2x, 5x and 10x tables.

If you are reading these out for children to answer be sure to read each question slowly and at least twice. The first time the question is heard the child will probably be thinking about what needs to be done. The second time reinforces the numbers involved.

Year 3 mental arithmetic (sets 29 and 30)

This week’s sets of mental arithmetic questions concentrate solely on addition and subtraction. There are many different strategies that can be used, depending very much on the numbers involved.

For example:

7 plus 147 can be done quickly by counting on 7, or by  knowing off by heart that 7 and 7 is 14

9 plus 129 can be done by adding 10 and subtracting 1

44 plus 16 can be done by adding the tens first and then the units, or vice versa.

It is important that children have all these techniques at their fingertips, and one way to make sure they have is to point out the many possible ways and which are the most efficient.

Year 3 mental arithmetic (sets 27 and 28)

Today I have published the first of our next sets of mental arithmetic for year 3. This is the first of another 12 sets for the spring term, which will build up to another 24 pages of 10 questions.

This week I am looking at rounding, using terms such as ‘more than’ and ‘less than’ as well as finding numbers half way between two other numbers.

The rounding questions are straightforward and a good check to see if children understand this idea.

Watch out for the question, ’500 is 100 more than which number?’ Many children will not think how this has been phrased and answer 600, when the correct answer is 400.

Finding ten less than a number which is just over the hundreds boundary (eg ten less than 207) can also prove tricky. There are several approaches, including

Taking ten from the 20 tens in 207, leaving 19 tens and 7 or 197.

Counting back 7 to 200 and then another 3 to 197.

Remember to ask children how they worked out the answers.

Year 3 mental arithmetic: (sets 25 and 26)

It is easy to miss this growing set of resources for year 3, tucked away in the Know Number Facts category of the year 3 section. If you are working with year 3 children this is a very useful set of mental arithmetic questions.

So far there have been 24 sets of questions published and further sets will be published for each of the next two terms. They consists of two sets of ten questions, followed by an answer sheet. Each set is a full A4 page so that they can be used in several ways. If given orally the teacher/parent only needs to print the answer page as all the questions are included on this and the children can just write the answers or call them out. If the teacher/parent wants the child to read the questions then they can print out the question sheets as well. This could also be shown on a whiteboard for a whole class to work on at the same time.

The first set of questions concentrate on writing whole numbers, counting on and back in tens, addition, subtraction and place value.

Year 3 Mental arithmetic (sets 1and 2)

Here we have another two sets of ten mental arithmetic questions for Year 3. This week the questions concentrate on adding three small numbers, time and finding 100 less than a number.

When adding three digits mentally it is usually easier to do it in the order that the question is spoken because it is easier to retain the three correct numbers ‘in your head’. However, still look for pairs of numbers which make multiples of 10 as this makes the question much easier to answer.

Perhaps a point to raise here is that each of the questions should be read out loud at least twice, if not more, to gice children the best chance of answering correctly.

By the end of year 3 children should be quite confident with time questions and adding minutes to a set time.

Year 3_Mental Arithmetic_Sets 23 and 24