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Resource of the week: Year 4 pictogram

Graphs are often perceived as a quite easy part of maths, but many children find interpreting them correctly quite tricky. This page looks at the most popular cars seen in a village. Each picture of a car represents 5 cars. Again this page should be seen more as a starter to go and collect data themselves and make their own pictograms. Problems might arise when the data is not in whole fives or tens. This can be solved by showing part of a car eg a wheel could represent one car. This would need to be shown clearly on the pictogram.

This and other handling Data activities can be found in our Year 4 resources.

Pictogram: most popular cars

What are Dyscalculia and Dyslexia?

Dyscalculia and Dyslexia! Two tricky words to spell, but they could be part of the reason why your child has turned off maths, even at an early age.

Sometimes the problems our children have with maths seem almost inexplicable and it can be very frustrating as an adult trying to help a child who just seems ‘not to get maths!’ The real causes of problems may be quite deep rooted and have little or nothing to do with intelligence or lack of effort, but have much more to do with processing and acquiring the skills of mathematics. URBrainy have just published the first of a short series of simple, straightforward articles on how dyslexia and dyscalculia can affect children’s progress in maths.

If you have a child who has problems with time or direction, reverses digits when writing numbers down, or can’t seem to remember simple sequences or ‘tables’ then it would be well worth taking a couple of minutes to read this first article.

Read the article: What are Dyscalculia and Dyslexia?

Coming soon: counting, calculator game and dividing decimals

A mixed bag of activities coming next week.

By year 4 children should be confident enough to count on in steps of 50 or 25 and we will be publishing a practice sheet on this as it is seldom found elsewhere, but does come into the Year 4 objectives.

We will also be publishing another in our series of using a calculator to help learn and reinforce tables. To be successful with this game you need to know your 5x table: the calculator just confirms your correct mental arithmetic (or not!). Suitable for Year 3 upwards.

Also coming soon is a good revision sheet for Year 6 to make sure that they understand the process of dividing decimals by 10 or 100. Knowledge of this is crucial for success in High School.

Resource of the week: Tables square and square numbers

This worksheet has a 10×10 multiplication square which is a brilliant aid to helping with tables, but it is also excellent for showing the pattern of square numbers from 1 to 10.

A square number is made by multiplying a whole number by itself. eg 4 x 4 = 16.

16 is a square number.

It is quite useful to learn the first 10 square numbers off by heart:

1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100.

We will look more closely at square numbers later.

Square numbers (pg 1)

Resource of the week: Equivalent fractions

$largest-smallest-equal-fractions$

Once the idea of equivalent fractions has been understood it becomes possible to compare two fractions to see which is the larger. The first thing to remember is that the larger the number on the bottom of the fraction, the smaller each part of the fraction is. So 4/100 is much smaller than 4/25.

Now this is also easy if the bottom number (denominator) is the same in each fraction eg 1/5 is smaller than 3/5.

The difficulty comes when the numbers are not the same. How do you compare 3/5 with 7/10?

The easiest way is to make the bottom number of each fraction the same, and in the case above this will mean converting the 3/5 into tenths. We can do this by multiplying the 5 by 2 to make 10 and we have to do the same with the top number, multiplying the 3 by 2. In this way 3/5 can be converted to 6/10.

3/5 and 6/10 are equal, or equivalent.

It is now easy to see that 6/10 is smaller than 7/10, so 3/5 must also be smaller than 7/10. Job done!

Later it will become harder to convert so that the denominators are the same; sometimes you have to multiply both fractions by different numbers, but this comes later! At the moment it is important to get the basics correct.

Equivalent fractions: comparing

Free maths resources: a number week

Next week our free maths resources are very much to do with counting and number.

Firstly we have a page on revising counting back in whole tens from any 2-digit or 3-digit number. Some children still find this difficult in Year 3, especially when it involves crossing a hundreds boundary. If children do find this hard it is well worthwhile going back to a large number square and making sure that they are confident with counting on, crossing the hundreds boundary.

We also have something harder for those who are getting to grips with written methods of subtraction. Using written methods of subtraction can prove quite tricky with money as it involves decimals. It is important to lay the question out in the standard way, even if it is shown horizontally or just as a written problem and most importantly, to keep the decimal points in a line.

We also have another page on multiplying mentally. There are some definite dos and don’ts when it comes to multiplying decimals ‘in your head’, which Year 6 children should be well aware of as they approach going on to High School.

To multiply by 10 move each digit one place to the left, including tenths to the units, if necessary.

To multiply by 100 move each digit two places to the right.

Resource of the week: relate division and fractions

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Something in the archives for Year 5 this week. The relationship between fractions and division is one which many children fail to grasp. Put simply, one fifth of 30 is equivalent to 30 divided by 5, or written as a fraction 30 over 5.

It can be a great help to see a fraction as a division calculation. 1/2 can also be thought of as one divided by two.

This page takes a quick look at this and should show whether your child does understand this important relationship.

Relate division and fractions (pg 1)

Coming soon: Multiplication, counting and converting units

Next week we have an excellent illustration of how knowing ‘tables’ and understanding place value can make other maths much simpler with a page of questions all about multiplying multiples of ten by a single digit.

If you know that 7 x 8 = 56 then 70 x 8 can be done ‘in your head’ very quickly.

Many children (and adults) count out loud and use their fingers when counting on in tens, holding out one finger each time ten more is added. Nothing wrong with this but care needs to be taken that ten is not counted when saying the first number out loud.

It is a sad state of affairs that schools are still having to teach children to convert imperial to metric units, even when we have been metric for over 40 years. nevertheless I have included some work on concerting imperial and metric units.

Coming soon: measuring, decimals and multiples

Children are used to reading scales where the divisions go up in ones, but they find it much harder when either they go up in larger numbers or when not all the divisions are numbered. Next week we are publishing a measuring worksheet which does both of these. The ruler shown is a scale drawing and each division is 10 cm, but only the 100 cm division lines are named.

Multiples of ten are fairly easy to work out, but nevertheless practice makes perfect and coming up soon is a great game of strategy to play to help reinforce multiples of 10.

We will also be sending up a straightforward mental arithmetic page on adding decimals for Year 6. The process is very much the same as adding two 2-digit whole numbers. When adding in our heads we usually start with the largest numbers, which, of course, is the opposite of the way we do it on paper. This needs pointing out to children as many, even in Year 6, lack the strategies necessary for mental addition.

Resource of the Week: Written addition of money

Once children are familiar with the standard method of addition for 3 digits they can be introduced to addition of decimals. One of the best ways to do this is by adding money. On this page the first eight questions have been written out in the correct way, but the next seven will also need to be written out using the same method. The key here is to keep the decimal point in line as the numbers in later addition of decimals may not necessarily all have two digits after the decimal point. Also, don’t forget the £ sign in the answer.

This page and other similar pages can be found in our Four Rules Maths Worksheets.

Standard money addition (pg 1)