Investigating mathematics

This is less blog post, more list of resources that I use to teach the new maths curriculum, as well as old favourites Nrich and the brilliant reasoning in the classroom activities. Don't forget the archived misconception resources too - they are very helpful for teaching points.


Edu Dudley lots of great stuff including finding all possibilities, finding rules and describing patterns, logic problems, reasoning about numbers and the mathematical challenges booklet. 

Maths warriors  investigations

Fractions 

Trinity maths hub - free learning schemes  and assessments for each year group (spring mastery docs can also be found here)

Teaching for mastery assessment materials

We have also purchased the Rising Stars problem solving and reasoning books at school, which have good activities and good approaches to maths

More will be added as I remember them!

Maths Minion!

Like lots of infant teachers, I have always had a class bear or two. The first way that I used them was to teach children about the world. The Bears went travelling, we plotted their travels using Google maps and the children shared photos and wrote journals (see the blog sidebar and one of the pages of their travels). Lily went to Australia, Old Trafford, Las Vegas and the Yosemite National Park, to name a few, all in one year! 

When I started at East Harling the class bears were used to promote free writing. By the middle of the second year I changed the expectation to reading the bears a story, because the quality of writing in the books differed greatly and I didn't want judgments being made. My children were asked to read a story to the bears and record what they (the bears) thought of it. 

This year I have one bear that will be a travelling bear and a very new Maths Minion to try. As a school maths is a focus area so I thought that one way to support this would be to put together a rucksack with Stuart, who needs to learn some maths as he finds it tricky. The back pack came with a handy pencil case, folder and notebook. I will add a laminated sheet with some activity ideas, which will include lots of games, mental maths skills and ideas to use and apply mathematical in daily life. I have also linked the Maths Wizards blog I made  couple of years ago (for a child with SEN) to our Class Blog as I know that many children enjoy using technology to play games. Hopefully this puts less pressure on busy parents.

I'm relying on the novelty factor of Minions to entice the children to take Stuart home with them.  The important thing is that it will be their choice what they do. We shall see how it works! 

Minion Me! My lovely class Minions!

Bugs and numbers

This is another lovely EYFS/SEN app made by Little Bit Studio. Like Bugs and Buttons, the graphics and the music are appealing and of high quality. There is a range of games to play, to enhance early maths skills from counting and adding to time and fractions.

As with the last app I reviewed, there is a handy finger to give you a hint should you need it.

The first game I played was number recognition and ordering to 100. If you get the order wrong you get an 'oops', but then continue from where you were, which is good.

At the end you get a score, which I would then encourage children to try and beat.

The next game I looked at was a sequencing game. It shows you the order of the xylophone, which you then shake up before replicating. A nice matching/sequencing game. 

The time game is a simple match the analogue to digital time. I only played this briefly so it may go past hour times. It scaffolds learning by showing the time as you move the small hand, then the train chuffs away if you match the time correctly. 

The adding game uses ants as visual, which I know will appeal to children. It is a great game for independent work for a child with SEN in my class as I know he will experience lots of success with it-which it more important than challenge at times. 

The music is appropriate for each game, with a lovely Italian favour during pizza fractions! 

The measuring lab had suitably scientific kooky music too. If you weren't watching your child at play, you would know exactly what they were doing.

There is also some lovely humour too - during game show addition and subtraction (level 1) I was told that I am a super genius! ☺️ That's what I tell my children all the while!

I haven't played all the games in the app, but from the ones I have played I would recommend it as another quality app for early years education. I will definitely be using this in class.

Thinking blocks - scaffolding maths

These apps, based on Singapore maths blocks, are useful for modelling problems and scaffolding children's mathematical thinking and reasoning skills in a concrete way. I aim to test them out quite quickly with my year 2 children to see if they do what I think they will do. You can also use the apps on your computer - visit their website and follow the link to do so http://www.thinkingblocks.com

So here's how they work for addition and subtraction.

A problem is shown at the top of the screen, with blocks on the right to drag across.

You are given the opportunity to check after each task.

It then provides the numbers for you to put in the right place, according to the wording of the problem.

Pressing the resize button will automatically size the blocks commensurate to the numbers.

With the numbers in place, you can they think about the calculation needed to find the missing number. The calculator means that the calculation is made easy - the focus is on problem solving skills.

The multiplication and division app works in much the same way. There are two more apps: fractions and ratio and proportion.

I often think that even my able year 2s need strong visuals at times; Piaget's theories ring true in that children seem to start internalising at around age 7. With my group of most able mathematicians, one child is very hard on themself and their confusion (leading to distress) is clearly written all over their face when reasoning about number. It's not that the maths skills aren't there, it's the processes that need internalising and reversing that are tricky. Maybe the blocks will help?

Tangram

This app is free today via apps gone free and is another good app that allows children to learn and create. In the models section there are 12 animals to create, some scaffolded with the shapes showing. 

The shapes are drag and drop- easy for little fingers to manoeuvre. The build section lets you explore your creativity, then allows you to move your creation around the screen, save it and photograph it. 

It's a great little freebie that once again satisfies elements of the computing curriculum at ks1. 

UR Brainy maths app

I have had a play with this app this weekend to review how good it will be for our ks1 learners - particularly a child on my class who needs resources to support with his independent learning.

There are four areas that you can explore that support basic number skills. If you get an answer wrong, the incorrect number becomes dull so that you don't press it again. There are 4 questions for each level. One thing that would make it easier for some children would be the option to hear each question. 

When you play the more/less activities, there is a nice model that allows children to count cows to find one more. Showing one less is not so obvious as it looks the same as below, but with the cow on the left faded for one less than 2. It might be clearer just to have a line through one. 

This will certainly be a useful app for our earlier learners. I will add the opinion of one of our little beta testers tomorrow! Thank you for the trial @urbrainy!

Mystery Math Museum

Now that my reports are done I have spent a bit more time playing with some apps that I've been meaning to look at properly for a while. The first one is Mystery Math Museum and really like it. It would hold the interest of some of the children in my year 2 class and I think would be a good way in for children with SEN, who enjoy gaming. It's not complicated - easy enough for my year 2s and younger, but the difficulty level can be differentiated.

You start with a map and access to some buildings. Other buildings get unlocked as you go through your journey. The essence of the game so far is that you rescue dragonflies or collect gold coins to gain a portrait, by going through different buildings.

To get through the doors you have to solve calculations (you can set the skill level of this so it is easily differentiated).

As you pass through rooms, you collect numbers in bubbles in order to complete the sums to open the doors. There's a certain amount of problem solving here, as you may not have the numbers you need, so you have to go a different route to find them. Within each room there are lots of interactive elements - mostly sound effects. Visually it looks good. Next week I will get one of my 7 year old digital leaders to have a look and review it from their perspective.



At £1.99 I think this could be a brilliant game to have at home and it is one that I will be letting my parents know about.

BB's Bizarre Beasts

This is a quick synopsis of a mini mantle that incorporates 4 days of maths and English. We became a Pet Company called BB's Bizarre Beasts, because children love animals and who couldn't be compelled to learn about these weird and wonderful creatures. Many of you who know me will be aware that the planning is sketched in my head and that I feel that writing it down comprehensively is a pointless exercise. I'd much rather put the time and energy into resourcing and enhancing my ideas - or sharing them! So hopefully these resources will inspire you!

The learning objectives are:

Identify and record the information or calculation needed to solve a puzzle or problem; carry out the steps or calculations and check the solution in the context of the problem

Solve problems involving addition, subtraction, multiplication or division in contexts of numbers, measures or pounds and pence

Recognise all coins

Halving

When we became the pet shop I put on my work apron and cap, put my notebook and pen in my pocket and introduced myself as the proud owner of Bizarre Beasts, the best pet shop in the universe. I talked about all the creatures in our shop before playtime and shared little stories about them (trivial facts like what they ate, where they lived, who they lived well with). This took about 10-15 minutes.

I debriefed them afterwards, as some of my children were saying 'Is this real?' They needed to know that my stories were in my imagination and that it would be cruel to keep wild animals in a pet shop. My class liked the idea that we were using our imagination this way. After play, before we dropped back into the drama, we had a quick white board maths session when we thought about how we drew 'stories' to solve problems. We practised the skills we needed before the drama; problem solving is a whole class target and I wanted them to have their memories jogged about some familiar strategies. 

 In preparation for after play I had blue-tacked some of the animals around the room, with trickier problems where the higher ability children sit in class. When we became the pet shop again, I told the employees that there were lots of problems to solve in the pet shop today and that I needed their help. My class set off to work together to solve the problems, with a real buzz. They could work where they wanted. I asked some employees to work with me and help me solve the problems. The employees had activity sheets to write their answers on and were aiming to get a 'pay rise' for their hard work (they worked well to that incentive!)

The same activity sheets have been adapted for tomorrow, when unfortunately one of our Swedish employees has been giving the wrong change. I have written the cost of each animal in the end column and the children have to show the coins that are needed to pay, so that these posters can be displayed near the shop till. Mid ability children will show 2 different ways for each price, high ability at least 3 different ways of paying to help our Swedish employee. This will lead on to giving change from 20p, 50p and £1. 

Before they drop into the drama, they will have a quick maths skills practise, so that I know that they have the skills they need before they go off. This will consist of coin recognition and paying amounts, which will be no longer that 15 minutes. There are ways of doing this within the drama and I have considered jumping back in time to when all the new employees from other countries had money training, but I have an observation tomorrow and I am wary of being overly dramatic!

The last maths activity will be when we have the dilemma of not making enough money to pay the employees. The solution - half price sale!

For writing activities we are adding some descriptions of creatures to put by their tanks (this downloads better than it looks online)  and some persuasive posters for our half price sale. 

Maths stories

I have enjoyed teaching maths through mini mantles before and my children have risen to many challenges. My favourites were Swift Air, Nature Park and of course Chadbury's chocolates. I will share a brief synopsis of each. The links will take you to class blog posts, but be warned they may be a little vague!

Swift air

Swift Air announce new flights and holiday packages from Norwich International airport. Cue lots of problem solving with money and time. Swift air had to respond to customer requests and produce itineraries for them, which were carefully priced. Some were on offer at 50% off (year 4/3 set) and the G&T children had to calculate time zone differences. If you look closely at the photo you will see how the children were working with large amounts of money, then writing their responses to the customer phone calls (on the pink paper).

Party Planners and Chadburys chocolates

There are a range of possibilities when you become a company like Chadbury's chocolates and mine went far beyond the daily maths lesson. You can read about the full mantle here, which involves a giant problem!


I have used the theme of Chadburys for other maths too, such as data handling, designing boxes, weights and measures and also incorporated it into Party planners, who take customer orders and fulfil them! A great mantle for Easter.

Childerwood Nature Park

After a lottery award (we needed to problem solve with money) the Nature Park folk decided to spend money on a new adventure playground, before designing and creating more animal pens. This covered shape, space and measure (including area and perimeter) as well as a lot of problem solving and calculating. Of course collaborative working was another key skill.

In KS1 I have used maths stories more, though maths has crept into many other mantles, such as when we have had to measure polar bears in order to transport them in trailers and design and create things like fire engines, wheel barrows for Percy the Park Keeper and feeding platforms for orangutans. There have been many occasions when grid references, position and direction have been included and their have been many opportunities through geography and science to practice basic maths skills.  It puts the maths into a context, therefore giving more meaning.

As a KS1 teacher I have looked for stories that support mathematical understanding too. There are many! I have used the obvious (How Big is a Million?, 365 Penguins and Olivers Vegetables etc are great), but have started to look for others. I won't reinvent the wheel, but thought it would be useful to collate a bank of resources so that I don't have to keep dearching for them. here are some I've found. Please leave a comment with links to your maths stories posts or favourite resources. I love using other folk's successful ideas!

Maths from stories a great book list, mind maps linked to books and plans for different year groups can be found here. A useful resource!

Maths Stories lots of links to maths resources, not just from books

Gingerbread man themed maths

Maths Contexts you have to have a Norfolk nsix account to access these

Maths Story  has stories, poems and songs from the USA

And of course it wouldn't be complete without a great Pinterest page (thanks to Jan Pringle)

Please share your maths stories!