Maths help for parents of children aged 5 to 11
Maths Worksheet: relate fractions and division
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.
Year 5 Maths Worksheet: solving division problems
By year 5 solving division problems ‘in your head’ get quite tricky and a very good understanding of the relationship between multiplication and division is needed. Questions involving sharing with remainders need to be solved which need both working out ‘tables’ and calculating the number left over.
It is always a good idea to ask children how they reached their answers as this can reveal a great deal about their mathematical thinking as well as their knowledge of ‘times tables’.
Here we have a page of division problems, all of which should be answered mentally, although ‘jottings’ may help.
This bar chart is of a type which children may not have come across before. It shows the frequency of events; in this case the frequency of the number of goals scored by ‘The Albion’. The term ‘mode’ is used, which means the most common as well as other terms such as ‘maximum’.
Care needs to be taken when answering questions such as how many goals did they score in total? It is no good just reading the frequency from the left hand side – look at the number of times two goals were scored, which is 6 times. This means that 12 goals were scored in these games!
Old football tables can be easily found in papers etc and prove a rich source of data for children to create their own frequency charts.
Another in our series of adding decimals mentally, suitable for year 5 children. A good understanding of place value and decimals is needed for this, especially for the second set of questions.
Look out for a common error. For example: 0.3 + 0.48 answered as 0.51. In this case the 0.3 has been thought of as 0.03 and added to the hundredths when it should be added to the tenths, so the correct answer is 0.78.
We are looking for quick responses to these types of question. If children are taking a long time over them it might be because they have not learned their addition facts to 10 sufficiently so that they still need to count on to work the answers out.
Further similar pages to this can also be found in our Four Rules section.
This page is all about using mental strategies to add decimal fractions. Before attempting this children should be able to add two 2-digit whole numbers in their heads and have a good understanding of place value.
The mental process of adding 2.4 and 3.7 is almost the same as adding 24 and 37; in fact many people just ignore the decimal to work the answer out and then insert it at the end. Again, it is perfectly normal to add the units first and then the tenths, which is the opposite of doing it on paper.
The second half of the page looks at adding tenths and hundredths. A good way to look at this is to think of it as money ie adding pence and writing the answer as pounds (but without the sign!)
Another mental arithmetic maths worksheet on decimals, suitable for Year 5. This page looks at pairs of decimals that make 10. Once again there are several ways of tackling these questions.
One way is to add on from the smaller number, firstly, the tenths to make the next whole number, and then the units to make 10.
eg 10 – 6.7
Count on from 6.7 to 7 which is 0.3
Then count on from 7 to 10 which is 3
Answer 3 + 0.3 = 3.3
Another way is to count on the units first and then the tenths, but beware the answer which counts on 4 from 6 to make 10 and than counts on 0.3 as this will result in an answer which is one too many: a common slip-up.
Another way of doing this is to ignore the decimal and think of the question as 100 – 67. Work it out mentally (which is 33) and then convert back to 3.3.
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!
You can really hit the mark with next week’s selection of worksheets. Most will be to do with mental methods of counting and addition. Firstly, we have counting on with large numbers. Most of these questions cross the thousands boundary and also provide good practice at reading larger numbers. For Year 3 we have an addition worksheet on how to to add 9 to 2-digit numbers mentally. There will also be a page of standard written addition of 4 digit numbers in our Four Rules section.
For older children there is a page on decimals, working out decimals with a total of ten.
If you are looking for addition worksheets, don’t forget to look in the Four Rules section as well as in each individual year under Knowing Number Facts and Calculating.
By year 5 children should be getting familiar with numbers with two decimal places. Money is the obvious example, but they should also be using these numbers out of the context of money. The main development is with the use of the second digit after the decimal point; the hundredths.
When writing a number such as 4 hundredths it is important to include both zeros in the units and the tenths: 0.04. The zero is placed in the units to make it easier to see that it is a decimal fraction; otherwise the decimal point might be missed and the number read as 4.
Probably the hardest question on this page is the last, to write a number between 0.9 and 1.
Whilst some children will deny that it is possible, there are, of course, millions of possible answers, but usually we would expect children to keep to writing hundredths e.g. 0.92 or 0.94.
The second in our series of rounding worksheets for Year 5 looks at rounding one and two decimal place numbers.
When rounding an amount such as £3.47 to the nearest pound the key digit to look at is the tenths digit. If it is 5 or more, round up. Less than 5, round down.
So £3.44 rounded to the nearest pound is £3.
£3.47 rounded to the nearest pound is £4.
Rounding is very useful when making estimates of answers before using a calculator to make sure that the answer shown on the calculator is sensible.