Maths help for parents of children aged 5 to 11
Free maths worksheet from mathsblog.co.uk
When it comes to decimals children can become very confused, so here is a nice starter for adding a decimal.
The key to success is to make sure that the units are added to the units, so that 3.4 + 5 is 8.4, not 3.9 and always remember the decimal point in the answer.
Division is one of the big problem areas in maths, partly because success relies on a good knowledge and understanding of basic number.
There are two important ideas about division on this maths worksheet. Firstly, when a number is divided by 1 it stays the same. Fairly obvious to us, but for young children they need to understand division in two ways:
a. understand division as grouping or repeated subtraction. For example: 20 divided by four can be thought of as ‘how many 4s make 20?
8 divided by 1 can be thought of as ‘how many 1s make 8?’
b. understand division as sharing. For example: share 20 sweets between 4 people.
8 divided by 1 can be thought of as sharing 8 between one person ie they get it all!
The second part of this worksheet looks at dividing by 10. Now it has been stressed before that when multiplying by ten we must not say ‘just add a nought’. In the same way when dividing by ten don’t say ‘take away the nought’ because later there will not be any noughts in the questions!
We continue to list the recommended vocabulary in year 2, this section dealing with Time.
Words to do with Time include the months of the year:
January February
March April
May June
July August
September October
November December
Plus some more general time words:
minute second
quarter to quarter past
digital analogue
clock watch timer
Remember: children are expected to be acquainted with these words, but not necessarily to be able to spell them.
(Taken from Mathematical Vocabulary Book DfEE)
Well I like numbers, as you might guess, but did you know that your children, and everyone else’s are going to feature on a new database and each child will be prescribed a unique number! Yes, contact details of every child under 18 is going to go on a huge database, which itself will be accessible to over 390 000 staff. Children’s Minister, Baroness Morgan states that parents would not be allowed to remove their children from the list.
Why, you might ask, is this database being created?
It is thought that the database will improve information sharing between professionals working with children and was created as a result of the death of 8-year old Victoria Climbie.
What information is being collected:
Name
Address
Parents’ contact details
Date of birth
School
Doctor
and each child is given a unique identifying number. Perhaps more worrying is that additional information may be added by the agencies.
Who will be able to see the information? Local authority staff, police, health services and children’s charities to start with. Given our record for keeping databases safe, we can presume that access will be leaked. Is this the best way to spend our money safeguarding children?
This has been planned for 8 years and training is beginning for local authority staff in the near future.
Free maths worksheet from mathsblog and mathsgogogo.co.uk
Here is a way of identifying shapes that you do not often see in worksheets, but is considered important in the maths curriculum. It is known as identifying shapes by using a binary tree.
A binary tree leads you through a series of questions, which can only be answered yes or no, each question question narrows down the number of possible correct answers, until there is only one left. Binary trees are often used in science but they can also be used in maths.
Free maths worksheet from mathsblog.co.uk
Here are two straightforward sets of questions which deal with adding 8 to a single digit. Eventually children should know, off by heart, all the answers to these questions, but that takes a lot of time and practice. Confidence can be gained by learning some of them; eg knowing that 8 + 2 makes 10 can lead on to knowing that 8 + 3 makes 11.
Until they have been learnt most children will need to count on, perhaps using fingers or practical apparatus such as cubes to work the answers out.
I know that quite a few of the users of the site are home educators so the latest news from the government will interest them. Children’s Minister, Baroness Delyth Morgan, has announced that local authorities need to ensure that those children who do not attend school are taught properly at home.
“Parents are able, quite rightly, to choose whether they want to educate children at home, and a very small number do. I’m sure, the vast majority do a good job,” said Baroness Morgan.
“However, there are concerns that some children are not receiving the education they need. And in some extreme cases, home education could be used as a cover for abuse.”
Surprisingly there is no official figure for the number of children who are taught at home, but estimates suggest around 50 000. There are many reasons for children not attending school, ranging from potential bullying, religion or just a feeling that children can be much better educated at home. In today’s society there are plenty of easily available resources, making it much easier to educate at home and to provide a rich learning environment and I wish all home educators the very best.
Free year 4 maths worksheet from mathsblog.co.uk and mathsphere.co.uk
By the end of year 4 children are expected to have strategies for answering a wide variety of questions mentally – in their heads. One expectation is to be able to subtract a single digit from a multiple of one hundred: eg 400 – 6 =.
Children usually approach this task in one of two ways: either by counting down using fingers, which can prove to be tricky remembering where you have got to; or by taking the single digit from 10 and mentally adjusting: 10 – 6 = 4, take 10 from 400 = 390, so the answer is 394.
As well as having questions to answer, this worksheet also asks brief for explanations, which children often find difficult to state, even if they can work out the answer.
Learning the 9x table with mathsblog.co.uk
The 9 times table does have a number of interesting patterns, not least of which is that the digits of each answer also add up to 9. This is an excellent way of checking that a number is divisible by 9.
Once again we are really only interested in the really fast recall that comes with memorising the table.
The whole idea of tables is that they are learnt, off by heart. To do this it is essential to say them out loud:
One times nine is nine
two times nine is eighteen
three times nine is twenty seven
four times nine is thirty six
five times nine is forty five
six times nine is fifty four
seven times nine is sixty three
eight times nine is seventy two
nine times nine is eighty one
ten times nine is ninety
Later these can be shortened to say, for example, “ seven nines are fifty six”.
Below are two worksheets for the nine times table. A good way to do these is to time them to see how long your child takes.
Another number rhyme from urbrainy.com Five currant buns is a long established number rhyme which helps children count down from 5 to zero. Again, it is a rhyme that can be learned off by heart. This whole idea can be developed in many ways: eg by baking some cakes, having 5 lined up and taking them away, one at a time, swapping with a 1p coin each time.