Category: Resource of the Week

Bonfire Night Worksheets

It’s always nice to have something topical to use as part of the maths curriculum. Today I would like to point you to a page on percentages, linked to the theme of bonfire night, or fireworks, suitable for Year 6 children who are learning about how to work out percentages.

Four different kinds of fireworks are on sale, with 20% off. The questions involve working out how much the boxes cost and how much in the way of savings can be made.

Finding 20% is relatively straightforward if done in two parts:

first find 10% by dividing by 2

find 20% by doubling the answer.

You can find this page in my Year 6, Understanding Number section.

Thanks to urbrainy.com for letting me publish this page. There are more bonfire night pages on their site, which you can trial free of charge at urbrainy.com

Bonfire night percentages

Resource of the Week: Subtraction of money

The standard written method of subtraction is usually used when adding amounts of money, but it can prove quite tricky 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. if using squared paper it is best to puit the decimal point on the line rather than in a square.

Watch out when there is a zero on the top line as many children go for the easy option and say ‘nought take away 3 is 3’ rather than going through the carrying process.

This is just one of our series on subtracting money.

Standard money subtraction: page 2

Resource of the Week: Find tenths and hundredths

This week we take a look at a worksheet on the relationship between fractions and division. It is important that children understand that finding one half of a number is equivalent to dividing by 2, that finding one tenth of a number is the same as dividing the number by 10 and to find one hundredth is equivalent to dividing by 100. Plenty of practice is needed with this before children go on to find, for example, two tenths, or three hundredths of numbers.

Most of these questions should be calculated mentally, although rough jottings may help. The second set of questions could cause a few problems. For example: ‘What fraction of a £1 is 20 ?’ requires a couple of steps:

Firstly convert the pound to pence £1 = 100p

Secondly write the fraction as 20 out of 100 or 20/100

Thirdly simplify to 2/10 and then 1/5.

Find fractions of numbers (p2)

Resource of the week: year 5 square numbers

square_numbers_2

This is just one of a short series of square number maths worksheets for Year 5.  It is an interesting and worthwhile exercise asking children to see if they can make a square out of 10 or 12 smaller squares (not overlapping etc) using plastic or card squares. Rectangles are possible, but not squares.

They can then be asked to find which numbers can be made into a square. This can be done either with smaller squares or as dots in an array.

There are several ways that questions involving square numbers can be phrased, including:

What is 4 squared?

What is the square of 4?

What number multiplied by itself makes 16?

Square numbers 2

Resource of the Week: half way between

This week I am highlighting a page which, on the face of it this looks quite a simple task, but many children (and adults) find very tricky. The page is on how to work out what half way between two numbers is. Often there is a lot of ‘trial and improvement’ going on in people’s heads as they guess their way towards finding half way.

Two methods make the task fairly straightforward.

For method one a number line is very useful to start with. Put a finger of the left hand on the first (lower) number shown on the number line and a finger of the right hand on the second number. Then move the left hand finger one place to the right and the right hand finger one place to the left. Repeat this until the two fingers meet – that is your half way number.

The second way of finding half way involves two steps:

step 1: add the two numbers.

step 2: halve the answer.

This is the better method as it works for all numbers, not just those shown on the number line.

This page can be found in our Year 3, Counting and Number section

Half way between_(1)

Resource of the Week: probability as a fraction

Probability does cause some confusion with children, partly because it can be expressed in several ways and because it is very hard to find events which are absolutely certain to happen, or not happen.

One way of displaying the probability of an event is as a percentage: for example, there is a 50% chance of landing on a head when tossing a coin.

Another way is as a fraction: there is 1/2 chance, or one in two chance of landing on heads.

A third way is as a decimal fraction, where zero means no chance and 1 is certain: there is 0.5 chance of landing on heads. Probability can be displayed along a number line marked from zero to one.

A the end of the page there is a tricky probability line where the events have to be placed in order of likelihood.

This year 6 maths worksheet is the second published which looks at probability as a fraction and then as a decimal fraction. A calculator would be useful to do the conversion and it is suggested that the answer should be displayed to 2 decimal places. A useful homework sheet.

Giving the probability as a fraction_(pg 2)

Calculating in Year 2

In Year 2 children will be calculating using the addition, subtraction, multiplication and division symbols. Their understanding of addition will develop as they begin to add a 1-digit number to a 2-digit number as well as beginning to answer written addition questions. (This is not the same as using written methods.) Developing efficient mental methods of addition and subtraction are still the most important aspects here, as written methods, apart from jottings, should not yet be used.

Subtraction is much easier once it is realised that it is the inverse (or opposite) of addition. Many subtraction questions can be answered by adding on, but children are expected to know subtraction facts to at least 10 (eg know that 9 – 4 = 5). Knowing these facts is just as important as knowing ‘tables’. They will also be working with 2-digit numbers, especially multiples of 10.

There is a good selection of addition and subtraction worksheets on the site in our Year 2 calculating section as well as a growing number of multiplication and division pages. Multiplication is seen as repeated addition and the 2x, 5x and 10x tables will be learned during the year.

As well as in the Calculating section further worksheets can be found in Knowing Number Facts and our Four Rules section.

Go to Year 2 calculating worksheets

Resource of the Week: Bar charts

Now we are coming on to more familiar territory for most people when we think of graphs: the bar chart or bar graph. Here the vertical bars represent the number of people going out on a boat. Each bar is completely separate from the others.

It is important that children get used to naming the horizontal and vertical axes and that these axes should always be named.

The hardest part of interpreting this bar chart involves the number of people shown on the vertical axis. The numbers go up in twenties, but of course there are intermediate values. The number of people on the 11.00 boat is more difficult to read and only a close approximation between 120 and 140 can be made. As it looks just less than half way to the next interval an estimate of just below 130 would be very accurate.

It is important not to just look at the graph but to also make some suggestions as to why the results are as they are. Why did the 12.00 boat have the least number of people on it, but the 1.00 boat had the most?

The second worksheet has similar problems, but the numbers on the vertical axis go up in tens rather than twenties.

Free Y4 maths worksheet: Bar charts (pg 1)

Free Y4 maths worksheet: Bar charts (pg 2)

Counting and Number in year 2

A great deal is expected of children by the end of Year 2 and we have some great maths worksheets to help them on their way.

By the end of the year children are expected to read and write 2-digit numbers in figures and words, describe and extend number sequences and recognise odd and even numbers.

They should continue to gain confidence with counting in singe steps up to at least 100 and begin to count in twos, fives and tens. Estimating a number of objects and rounding 2-digit numbers to the nearest ten are also introduced in Year 2.

There are a number of pages on counting on and back in ones and tens, finding missing numbers on number squares as well as recognising simple fractions.

Go to our year 2 Counting and Number worksheets

Short multiplication (multiplying by 3)

Today I have published a page of multiplication questions which can be used to reinforce knowledge of the 3 times table as well as practising the short method of multiplication. it is called the short method because it does not involve writing to answer to each part of the question on a new line and then adding the totals, rather it is all done on one line. The main thing to remember is to carry the extra tens into the tens column and remember to add them into the final answer. A page at the start shows how to go about using this method.

The primary Framework for Mathematics is very keen to emphasise that written methods of multiplication should only be used when children have established a sound foundation of mental methods.

This page can be found in the Four Rules, Multiplication category, along with lots more.

Short multiplication for multiplying by 3