May, 2010 | Maths Blog

Year 1 Addition: Four in a row game

This is a game for you to play with your child which urbrainy.com has allowed us to publish. You need two coloured pens to show who has answered the questions and a calculator in the case of any disputes!

Player 1 (with the red pen) goes first and chooses a square and writes down the correct answer to the sum.

Then Player 2 has their turn.

The aim of the game is to get a run of four correct answers in a row, either across, down or diagonally.

Correct squares could be coloured if this makes it easier to see the row of 4 developing.

You can make up extra rules yourself. For example, an incorrect answer could mean the other p[layer colours the square, or it could give the other player a free go. You decide!

Year 1 addition game: 4 in a row

Coming soon: Counting, addition and World Cup investigation

We have a great selection of worksheets coming up next week including an excellent World Cup Final investigation.

Firstly, a game for you to play with your child (around the age of 5/6) which urbrainy.com has allowed us to publish. You need two coloured pens to show who has answered the questions and a calculator in the case of any disputes!

By year 3 most children are quite confident with counting up in tens, but there can still be some difficulties, especially when counting over a hundreds boundary. We will be publishing a page which looks specifically at this.

It’s World Cup fever time and just to whet your appetite what if England reached the final and were drawing five all with Brazil at the end of extra time? How did the game go? Excellent for logical thinking and looking for patterns, especially as square numbers pop up!!

Suitable for Year 6 or younger football fanatics!

Year 6 maths worksheet: Interpret pie charts

Pie charts are a good way to illustrate the proportion of a whole amount or quantity. The arc length of each sector or the sectors area is proportional to the quantity it represents. This might sound a little tricky, but pie charts can be effective in displaying information.

This worksheet looks at a pie chart where the percentages have also been given. This allows for numbers to be worked out if the total number is given. The first pie chart looks at ice cream sales and the second looks at football supporters attending a tournament.

Pie chart (1)

Resource of the Week: Add 9 mentally

Being successful with mental arithmetic is all about having a ‘feel for numbers’ and being able to manipulate them to suit the way you like to calculate. Knowing a few basic ‘tricks’ helps enormously with this and gives children confidence.

Adding 9 might sound a little dull, but knowing that you can do it in your head by adding ten and subtracting one can make all sorts of other mental additions easy, as we will see later adding 19, 29, 39 etc all follow the same path as do adding 18, 28, 38 etc; these tasks which at first glance might seem tricky end up being easy.

This is suited to year 2/3 children who are confident with adding single digits and can count up to 100.

Add 9 to 2-digit numbers

Year 5 handling data: weather graph 2

It’s still lovely and sunny here and just as hot as it is in Paris.

Here we have a follow up page for the worksheet posted yesterday. Yesterday’s page concentrated on interpreting the data on a graph already drawn. Today’s worksheet gives the data and asks for a graph to be drawn. This can either be done on the chart provided, or to make it harder, using graph paper and children decide on the scale to use themselves.

The data provided is the average minimum and maximum monthly temperatures for Paris. A further exercise could be to compare the graph’s of London and Paris.

Weather chart (2)

Year 5 handling data: weather graph

It’s lovely and sunny here, so what better than a weather chart to brighten the day even further!

This worksheet shows a weather graph of the average maximum and minimum temperatures for each month of the year for London. It is typical of many found on weather sites on the internet, holiday brochures and newspapers. It is well worth reminding children that a graph should always have a clear title, and the axes labelled.

Some children have problems interpreting the scales on graphs when they don’t go up in single figures so it is important to point out what the temperature scale is. Most suited to year 5.

A follow up page to this will be published tomorrow.

Weather chart (1)

Coming soon: Handling data

Next week is very much a Handling Data week for older children. We will have two quite tricky weather graphs for Year 5 and some pie chart work for Year 6.

The weather graphs will show the average maximum and minimum temperatures for each month of the year for different places. It is typical of many found on weather sites on the Internet, holiday brochures and newspapers. It is surprising how often children ‘mess up’ with graph work, especially when labelling axes and interpreting the scales correctly.

Pie charts are not my favourite way of displaying data as they can often be misrepresented in the press. It is important to realise that they are only useful when comparing a slice to the whole pie, not comparing slices to different pies.

Year 6 probability worksheet

This page looks at writing the probability of events happening as a fraction or a decimal fraction.

For example, the probability of getting a head when tossing a coin is 1/2, but this can also be written as 0.5

There are several things to look for on this page:

1. being able to find the probability as a fraction and then simplifying the fraction. Rolling an even number on a 1-6 die is 3/6 or 1/2.

2. being able to convert the decimal into a decimal fraction. Some of these are very easy but others, such as converting 1/52 are difficult. You may like your students to use a calculator to do this.

3. If a calculator is used, round answers to two decimal places.

Again, it is not easy to place events on the number line at the bottom of the page. The main thing to look for is that the events are in the right order and approximately in the right place.

Giving the probability as a fraction or decimal (pg1)

Resource of the week: Subtraction crossing thousands

Today we revisit a page that shows maths can be much easier than it at first appears. There are many occasions when a 4-digit subtraction can be done ‘in your head’. These questions, suitable for Year 5, are examples of this. They all involve numbers which are just over and just under a whole thousand.

For example: 3003 – 2994

Probably the easiest way to do this mentally is to count on 7 from 2993 to make 3000 and then count on, or add, the extra 4, making 11.

This is much easier than doing the question on paper, with lots of ‘borrowing’ and carrying, crossing out etc!

Count up crossing thousands

Calculator game: Multiples of 5

The idea of this game is to make a row of 4 in any direction before your opponent. Take it in turns to use the calculator to multiple chosen numbers to match numbers on the grid. This is excellent practice at multiplying and dividing by 5 mentally and then using the calculator to check answers. Suitable for year 3 upwards.

Multiples of 5_larger numbers