Category: Maths Resources

Year 4 maths worksheet: Santa’s reindeer

More Christmas worksheets are available at:http://pages.urbrainy.com/happy-christmas-2011

 

We continue with our seasonal worksheets with some reindeer questions, probably best suited to children in Year 4 upwards.

Everyone knows about Rudolf, the red-nosed reindeer, but far fewer people know that there are eight others to go with him!

Santa’s reindeer pull the sleigh for Santa and help him deliver the presents. The nine names are based on a poem written in 1823 called, ‘A visit from St. Nicholas’, by Clement Moore which named eight reindeer:

Dasher

Dancer

Prancer

Vixen

Comet

Cupid

Donner (originally Dunder)

Blitzen (originally Blixem)

in a little known verse:

‘More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and call’d them by name:
“Now, Dasher! Now, Dancer! Now, Prancer, and Vixen!
“On, Comet! On, Cupid! On, Donder and Blitzen!’

The popularity of the song, ‘Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer led to Rudolf being added to this list, making nine in total!

This page can be found in the year 4 Using and Applying Maths category.

Santa’s reindeer

More Christmas worksheets are available at:

http://pages.urbrainy.com/happy-christmas-2011

Year 1 maths worksheet: Christmas halving

From time to time it’s nice to have a topical maths worksheet and here is one for year 1 at Christmas time.

The ability to double and halve numbers quickly is a great strategy to have at your fingertips as it can help later with all sorts of calculations. Here we have a year 1 page which looks at halving small even numbers. The theme is Christmas and there is lot’s of drawing! You might like to give a separate piece of paper so that the drawings can be done larger than on the sheet; or it could be very useful as a whiteboard activity.

Whilst I do not have a great many Christmas pages or a separate category for this I do know that urbrainy have an increasing number of them for the whole primary age range. A small selection are available absolutely free at:

http://pages.urbrainy.com/happy-christmas-2011

Halving small numbers (Christmas)

 

Calculator ban in Primary Schools

Primary school pupils could face a ban on using calculators according to Nick Gibb, the Schools Minister. Following a government study he has suggested that pupils should only be able to use calculators once they have mastered basic maths, including learning ‘times tables’.

This announcement comes as a result of a government study which found that 24% of adults had the number skills of a child aged 9 or younger. This includes being unable to work out their change in a supermarket.

That certainly does not surprise me, but I am not sure of the evidence suggesting a link between calculator use and lack of basic skills. Certainly I know of no school which allows children to freely use calculators to carry out basic calculations. I am also wondering how these children deprived of a calculator are going to get on with the SAT Paper B which is based on using a calculator and usually much harder than the non-calculator paper.

This kind of knee jerk reaction is typical of our government ministers. They might be better served by suggesting what children should be doing to improve their basic skills. Rather coincidently, talking of change from a supermarket, urbrainy.com have just informed me that they have  a Christmas Special  ‘Change from £10’ worksheet amongst many which are now available free of  charge on their site. These are also available for you at:

http://pages.urbrainy.com/happy-christmas-2011

KS2 Maths SAT question 25 from 2010 Paper A

Sarah had a bag of cherries…..Question 25 is one of those questions where you have to read it all carefully before starting and then proceed from the end, working backwards.

Suggested method:

The key to answering this question is to start at the end and work backwards.
Amy got 2 cherries.
Liam gave half of what he had left to Amy, so Liam must have had 4 left.
Liam had eaten 5 of his cherries so he must have had 5 + 4 = 9 cherries.
Sarah gave half of what she had left to Liam. This was 9 so she must have had 18 left.
Sarah had eaten 5 cherries so she must have had 5 + 18 = 23 cherries to start with.

The answer is   23
Two marks for this question.

If the answer is incorrect one mark can be given for showing appropriate working out, such as
2 x 2 = 4          4 + 5 = 9          9 x 2 = wrong answer of 16              16 + 5 = wrong answer of 21.
The working out must be carried through to reach an answer.

This is very much at the level 5 end of the paper, so correct marks here could just make the difference between Level 4 and level 5.

Question 25 from SATs Paper A 2010

Question 25 answer and suggested method

Year 2 investigation: 3 dice totals

Dice are a great resource to help with addition and logical thinking. This investigation looks at how many different ways a total of 12 can be made with three dice.

In fact this could be looked at in two different ways. If the dice were all different colours then there would be a great many more answers than if all three dice were the same and the order didn’t matter. For example the dice could be rolled as a 6, a 5 and a 1. With three similar dice  this would be the same as 1, 5 and 6 or 5, 6 and 1.

if the colours were different it could be recorded as

red: 6  blue: 5 and green 1

red 5, blue 6 green 1 etc

I would recommend with young children to keep to three similar dice as there are, in fact, very few answers. See the answer page for this.

Look for logical thinking and a well organised way of displaying results.

3 dice problem

Complete multiplication number sentences (3)

This is the third worksheet in the mini series looking at using different strategies to work out missing numbers in multiplication number sentences. Again, it is worth pointing out that people who say they, ‘can’t do maths’, probably don’t have a wide range of mental strategies to tackle questions. All the questions on this worksheet look very similar but if you analyse how the brain works to answer them you will see what I mean.

Let’s look at a couple of examples:

1. Question: ? x 6 = 360

I instantly recognise the relationship between 6 and 36, knowing that 6 x 6 = 36. it then becomes very easy to multiply by 10 to reach the answer 60. This is all done in less than a second.

2. Question: 26 x ? = 104

This takes a little longer and at first glance I’m not certain. I then realised that 25 is a quarter of 100, so 25 x 4 is 100,therefore 26 x 4 would be 104.

In the first question I am making use of knowing the 6x table. In the second question I am rounding a number, working out the answer and adjusting.

Of course, there are other ways, probably just as good  and don’t forget to ask the children how they worked out the answers. You might be surprised!

Complete multiplication number sentences (3)

KS2 Maths SAT questions 23 and 24 from 2010 Paper A

To answer question 23 you need to find the missing number to make the calculation correct.

11 x ?? = 1111

The answer is  101.
One mark for this question.

Suggested method:
To make this easy a good understanding of the relationship between multiplication and division is needed. Simply divide 1111 by 11, which is probably best done using the short division method.

It is possible that some children will recognise the pattern of dividing by 11 and immediately know this answer.

Question 24 asks for a quadrilateral to be drawn in its new position after a translation.

One mark for this question.

Slight inaccuracies in drawing are allowed (within 2 mm radius of correct points).

Suggested method:

The key to this question is the word ‘translated’. A translation is a slide in a particular direction. There is no rotation or change in the shape size.

This shape has been slid 3 squares to the right and 3 squares up.

Using this knowledge mark each of the other three points and join them with a ruler.

Questions 23 and 24 from SATs Paper A 2010

Questions 23 and 24 answers and suggested methods

Why not visit ks2-maths-sats.co.uk for free SATs papers and a great SAT revision programme?

 

More help with ordering decimals

I have published worksheets on ordering decimals before, but this page, lent to me from urbrainy.com is a very neat way of making sure that decimals are put in order correctly.

It suggests a very simple, step by step, approach which includes:

1. putting the numbers underneath each other, in a table, making sure that the decimals all line up.

2. filling any empty spaces with zeros, making them all the same length, with the same number of digits.

3. beginning to compare, starting with the units column.

Children who have not used decimals may well think that the size of a number depends on the number of digits so comparing decimals can be tricky, as a three digit number such as 0.19 is smaller than a 2-digit number such as 0.2.

Order decimals

Year 6 maths worksheet: ordering decimals

Ordering decimals can be pretty tricky. At first glance we might say that 0.509 is bigger than 0.51 because there are more digits, but it doesn’t work like that! Have a look at my step by step method of ordering decimals.

Step 1: Put the numbers in a table, making sure the decimal points line up underneath each other.

Step 2: Fill in the empty squares with zeros, making them all the same length.

Step 3: Compare, starting with the first column (units) and writing the numbers in order.

This is quite a nifty way of making sure that you have got the numbers in order, although it is a little time consuming. Grids have been provided on the worksheets, but if a question like this comes up in the SAT tests it should be sufficient to just write the numbers in columns, not forgetting to put them in the answer page at the end!

Order decimals

 

Year 4 mental arithmetic: multiplying by 4

Knowing the 4 times table is very important but using it is not always the most efficient way of finding an answer when using just mental methods. here we have a worksheet for year 4 children which looks at an alternative approach when multiplying by 4. This uses knowledge of the 2 times table to double and double again.

With some numbers this could be a better way. For example;

150 x4 can be done easily by doubling 150 to get 300 and then doubling 300 to get 600 – all done ‘in your head’ in less than a second!

Why not try this worksheet, to be found in the Year 4 calculating category.

Multiply by 4 by doubling