Maths help for parents of children aged 5 to 11

Free maths worksheet from mathsblog.co.uk

A good understanding of place value is needed to partition a number. Always think of large numbers in blocks of 3: hundreds, tens and units: then hundreds, tens and units of thousands: then hundreds, tens and units of millions. So 456 456 456 is four hundred and fifty six million, our hundred and fifty six thousand and four hundred and fifty six.

Partitioning a large number such as 2 345 678:

2 345 678 = 2 000 000 + 300 000 + 40 000 + 5 000 + 600 + 70 + 8

Try this worksheet:

Partitioning large numbers

Free maths worksheet from mathsphere.co.uk

Here is a nice little game that you can play at home with a partner. Make sure that you have got a pile of cubes that interlock. Sit with your back to your partner. You each have the same number of cubes (about 6 – 9 are quite enough) and to begin with, the same colours. One of you makes a quite simple shape from about 6 cubes. You then describe your shape to your partner and they have to try and build an identical shape – not always as easy as it seems!

This is very good practice at describing shapes. Children can be helped initially by giving them cubes of different colours, but later use cubes of the same colour which need more description.

Free maths worksheet: Year 5 making shape game

Free maths worksheet from mathsblog.co.uk

This is another maths worksheet for year 5 on standard units of measurement and will show clearly whether the metric system is understood.

The questions ask for fractions of metric units eg half of a kilometre or one tenth of a kilogram. Because it is a metric system finding one tenth or one hundredth of the units is very easy, especially compared to the old fashioned and out of date imperial measures.The tricky bit usually is remembering whether there are 100 or 1000 parts in the whole unit - that just has to be learned. The other complication for some children who relate ‘mille’ with a million, when it is, of course, a thousand.

Free Y5 maths worksheet: Metric problems

Adding or subracting whole hundreds ‘in your head’ can cause problems for children. It takes time to realise that if you know that 6 + 7 = 13 then it is easy to work out 600 + 700. Children are thrown by the larger numbers and do not see the patterns involved. eg:

6 + 7 = 13

60 + 70 = 130

600+ 700 = 1300

A good way to help here is to think of 60 as 6 tens and 70 as 7 tens, so 60 + 70 is 6 tens plus 7 tens and so on. The only real mental calculation that is being done is the original 6 + 7. The rest is an understanding of place value.

Free Y5 maths worksheet: Add or subtract whole hundreds

Writing large numbers in words is not easy but by the end of year 5 many children will be confident enough to read numbers in the millions. In the past, in the UK, a billion has been considered as a million million, but in the USA a thousand million has been thought of as a billion. This seems to be the norm in the UK these days as well so Neptune at 4 500 000 000 km from the sun can be said as “four billion, five hundred million km “.

Free Y5 maths worksheet: writing larger numbers

This is a good free maths worksheet to encourage systematic ordering of data. Lists of highest mountains, longest rivers and largest turtles are given, but they are not in order. There is a definite technique in efficiently putting these in order as it is very easy to miss one and not so easy to rearrange them if you are doing it on paper!

For example, take the mountains. They are all over 8000 m in height, so the key number to look at is the hundreds digit. Find the highest (Everest) and mark a 1 next to it. Find the second highest and mark it with a 2 and so on. Then rewrite them according to the marks.

Some good spin-off work here for Geography - can they find the mountains, rivers etc?

Free Y5 maths worksheet: Ordering measurements

There are two parts to this free maths worksheet on classifying shapes, both involving Venn diagrams. The idea is to put either the names of shapes or drawings of shapes in the correct areas of the Venn diagram.

Some examples have been put in the Triangles diagram. Some careful thought needs to be put into this exercise. For example, is it possible to have a right angled triangle which is also isosceles (ie two sides the same length). If so, is it possible to have a right angled triangle which is also equilateral? I’ll leave to to work out the answers to these.

Notice the scalene triangle which is outside the other areas as it has no equal sides and no right angles.

The second diagram is to put polygons and quadrilaterals in: remember that whilst many of the quadrilaterals we see in real life are regular, they do not have to be so.

Free Y5 maths worksheet: Classify shapes using Venn diagrams

Another worksheet with a ‘wheel’ of questions to practise subtraction of whole tens. year 5’s should find this quite easy and it is worth considering what approach they take to finding all the possible questions.

Start with a high number and go through the spokes to make a sum eg 130 - 80.

By year 5 children will certainly have come across negative numbers so there is no reason why they could not work out a question such as 130 - 160 as -30. Others will say that this negative sum ‘can not be done’ which is a correct way of looking at it if they are using the traditional pencil and paper style of thinking for subtraction.

Free Y5 maths worksheet: Investigate subtraction (pg 2)

Here is a nifty way to carry out some subtraction sums in an original format. Use the shape on the free maths worksheet to make the subtraction sums by linking one number to another via the subtraction sign in the middle.

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This kind of work really shows whether a child has understood how numbers work and, in particular, that the value of a digit depends on its place in the number. This understanding is absolutely essential for making further progress.

The numbers shown on this maths worksheet are very large; into the millions, and many children will find it difficult to read them out in words. Just remember to keep it simple, working in sets of three (hundreds, tens and units for each set).

Free Y5 maths worksheet: The value of digits