Maths help for parents of children aged 5 to 11
A great way to practice the 2x, 5x and 10x tables is with 2p, 5p and 10p coins. If you can gather together a set of ten of each this makes for a really good practical resource with endless questions: e.g. I have six 5p coins, how much do I have? Give me 20p all in 5p coins etc. We will publishing a worksheet which gives further ideas next week.
Also coming soon will be pages on time, including days of the week for young children and problems using television programme times.
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!
We have a growing number of pages on mental subtraction including this:
Dispatches Part 1 Kid’s Don’t Count
This two part special asks how and why we seem to be failing our young children when it comes to maths.
One fifth of children are leaving primary school without basic skills and far too many children dislike maths. The programme also questions the maths ability of the teachers.
The average 8 year old should be able to work out a question such as half plus a quarter. Many can’t.
Dispatches follows a class of final-year pupils at Barton Hill Primary School in Bristol as their staff adopt a radical approach to teaching, in a bid to improve the maths ability of these children before they head off to secondary school.
The blank looks on the children’s faces in the programme showed that they had no idea how to answer the questions. So why were they being asked these questions when they should have been working on a task they could achieve?
Much goes wrong very early in school, from Reception on, when children are moved on too fast, don’t grasp the basics and are lost from that point on. They don’t know basic number bonds such as 4 + 6, they don’t understand the value of the digit 1 in 15. Yet suddenly they are being asked to add 40 and 60! This is especially true of children who come into school with poor language skills. The best thing a parent can do is talk to their children.
Many teachers think that because they have taught a child something that the child has understood and learned it. Too often the planning says they have to move on, regardless of the needs of the children. So move on they do; the teacher, that is, not the child!
By the time children reach Year 3 they know so little they are really beginning to fail.
Many teachers’ own maths is weak, and like most of us, resort to old methods they went through themselves, even though those methods failed them.
Often it is teachers who don’t like maths who make it most difficult for the children, by not allowing them to use practical apparatus, or fingers to help count.
Intervention programmes usually work over the short term, it is more difficult to keep it up. Part two will be interesting!
Next week the emphasis is firmly on multiplication. To begin with we have a worksheet on the order in which we carry out a calculation. If a question involves both multiplication and addition then the convention is that the multiplication should be carried out first, then the addition.
This is followed by a tables grid, one of the most popular types of maths worksheet known on the planet.
We also have a multiplication by whole tens page which is a good introduction to written methods of multiplication.
This maths worksheet on reading time to the nearest quarter of an hour highlights several issues which create problems for children.
Firstly, on the clock face the hours are clearly numbered but the minutes are not and children need to be able to count on in fives before they can read minutes successfully.
Secondly, when telling someone the time we often approximate, either to the nearest quarter of an hour or the nearest five minutes, even when we can see clearly what the time is to the nearest minute.
Thirdly, when saying the time out or writing it we use several different conventions, as shown on the answer sheet.
Lastly, many children seldom come across this type of clock face, especially if they use digital watches, mobile phones etc., therefore take much longer to work it out – don’t be surprised to find ten year olds unable to read an analogue clock correctly.
Next week we have a maths worksheet for Year 5 children which introduces the idea of ‘index’ for writing the square of a number. Children should understand that 42 means ‘4 squared’ or 4 times 4. Often it is mistaken for 4 x 2.
We also have a page looking at the relationship between fractions, decimal fractions and percentages. This often proves very tricky for many children who fail to grasp that because percentage means ‘out of 100’ it can also be represented as a fraction. Most suited to Year 6 children.
For younger children we have a dice game which gives practice with counting single digits.
March 3rd 2010 is going to be a very special day in the maths calendar. It is World Maths Day!!
In 2009 World Maths Day saw over 2 million students from 204 countries answering a staggering 452,681,681 (452 million) questions correctly – all in one day!!
This year features an exciting new format with multi-levels for all age groups. Teachers, parents and media are invited to participate for the first time.
The organisers are hoping to beat last year’s record in this year’s great mental arithmetic challenge.
Registration is free for both schools and students and registrations are already open with over one million signed up.
What’s it all about?
Students play against each other at live mental arithmetic games, in real time across the whole world. Each game lasts 60 seconds and a student can play up to 500 games (that’s over 8 hours of solid maths, but you don’t have to do that much!!)
You register to get a user name and password. When you sign in on the day the Live Mathletics game engine will search the globe for worthy opponents.
Then its GAME ON!
Each correct answer is worth one point.! Open to all ages from 5 to 18 and all ability levels.
It’s FREE and there are some great prizes.
So remember the date and keep it free for World Maths Day!
To find out more just go to:
Just one page is not enough for children to become confident with a method, so as often as possible I include at least a second maths worksheet in this case, on ‘moving towards standard written methods’ of 2-digit addition’.
With this method the units are added and placed below the sum, making sure the units are in line and the ten is placed in the tens column. The tens are then added and placed below. The crucial concept here is to remember that it is tens which are being added, so there will be a zero in the units column to ensure that the tens numbers are kept in line. Finally the two answers are added.
This method shows clearly what is happening and should clarify the troublesome ‘carrying’ of the tens when using the standard written method.
Moving towards standard written methods of addition (2)
Children need an awful lot of practice and ‘overlearning’ if they are ever really going to know their tables. By knowing, I mean instant response, so that they know that 3 x 6 is 18 just as quickly as if they had been asked their name! It’s always good to find a slightly different approach and our worksheet next week does just that.
Magic squares come in all sorts of formats and our pages next week are quite challenging as they involve adding negative and positive numbers and are probably most suited to Year 6 children (10/11 yrs old).
We also have a follow up page to an earlier worksheet on adding decimals mentally. The approach is probably the same as adding 2-digit numbers, in that most people seem to do these ‘in their head’ by adding the units first and then adding on the decimals.
Don’t forget that we have a great range of pages which provide information and printable resources on what is expected in each year group by the primary Framework for Maths. This list contains the key vocabulary for Fractions, decimals, percentages and ratio in year 6.
Children will have come across all these words in earlier years, but by the end of year 6 (10/11 yr old) they should have a good understanding of all of them
Fraction proper fraction improper fraction
Numerator denominator
Equivalent reduced to cancel
Half quarter eighth
Third sixth ninth twelfth
Fifth tenth twentieth
Hundredth thousandth
Proportion decimal fraction
Decimal point decimal place
percentage per cent %
When spelling, the word twelfth often causes problems. They are all shown in a larger font below if you want to cut them out and print them.
If you are unsure of any of the meanings try one of the free online maths dictionaries such as at
www.mathsphere.co.uk or www.amathsdictionaryforkids.com/
(Taken from Mathematical Vocabulary Book DfEE)