- Group activities – fun group learning games. These encourage other skills as well promote mathematical development.
- Child led – Having the environment set up in a maths-friendly manner, so the children have lots of opportunities to discover and learn about maths for themselves. Having numbers in the environment or in messy play trays or role play areas can support this
- Practitioner interaction – Sensitive interaction from practitioners when children are playing or engaged in an activity can create lots of positive maths language and skills. Such as talking about the shapes that can be seen in the environment
Mathematicians of Sea View
The purpose of Mathematics
Mathematics is a creative and highly inter-connected discipline that has been developed over centuries, providing the solution to some of history’s most intriguing problems. It is essential to everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering, and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment. A high-quality mathematics education therefore provides a foundation for understanding the world, the ability to reason mathematically, an appreciation of the beauty and power of mathematics, and a sense of enjoyment and curiosity about the subject.
Aims
The national curriculum for mathematics aims to ensure that all pupils:
- become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, including through varied and frequent practice with increasingly complex problems over time, so that pupils develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately.
- reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry, conjecturing relationships and generalisations, and developing an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language
- can solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of routine and nonroutine problems with increasing sophistication, including breaking down problems into a series of simpler steps and persevering in seeking solutions.
Nursery
Mathematics is a specific area of the EYFS, it means that it is more commonly focussed upon with children aged 3 and above, however, it is best practice that practitioners actively promote mathematics around the younger children as well as the older ones. We use various approaches at Sea View to promote development in mathematics. It is important to find the most effective approach for the individual child and ensure that each task or approach sets out achievable challenges.
Counting through play
Exploring shape
Problem solving
Exploring numicon
Measuring in adult led activities and play
Adult led activities
Pattern
Ordering numbers through play
Reception
We have been weighing objects and making predictions about the heaviest and lightest object. Then we tried using a non-standard measure -cubes to balance the scales to see how many cubes heavy each item is.
We have been exploring Numicon to make number bonds to 5.
We have been leaning to share objects to find half.
We have been learning to recognise coins and like sorting them and making amounts to find the total.
Year One
In maths we use numicon to help us find number bonds to 10! We also use numicon to solve addition and subtraction number sentences.
Interacting with the starboard to order numbers from lowest to highest.
We have explored capacity and the terms full, half full and empty using the water tray.
We have learnt the names and properties of 2D and 3D shapes!
Year Two
We love to complete open investigations in our maths lessons! In this lesson, we looked at the characters from our story When the Dragons Came and investigated different ways to share the number of scales between each of the dragons. This showed us different ways to partition numbers!
Measuring
We have been working on our measuring skills and looked at how to measure objects around the classroom using cm cubes and rulers.
Year Three
Maths is Fun!
The children fully immerse themselves in the practical side of mathematical learning to consolidate and deepen their skills and understanding. In Year 3 the children really enjoy working with the coins to find totals and make amounts.
Presenting data
Year Four
In year 4 we started the year looking at place value of 4 digit numbers. We enjoyed using our prior knowledge to solve new challenges.
In the first half term of the spring term we have looked at division and how we solve division word problems.
In the 2nd half term of the spring term we have been looking at shape. This has included different line types, angles, 2d and 3D shape
Year Five
Negative Numbers
In maths, we have been learning about how to count forwards and backwards using negative numbers. We played a game of connect three. In connect three, you roll dice and consider which sums we could make from the numbers. The object is to get three numbers in a row on the grid. We all had so much fun and considered different strategies to be successful.
Taking inspiration from our fantastic class novel The Explorer, we visited the Amazon Shop to answer word problems relating to adding and subtracting decimal numbers.
Year Six
The Great Proportional Bake Off
In Maths we have been solving problems involving proportion. To complete this unit we all took part in ‘The Great Proportional Bake Off!’ We were split into 3 groups- Cakes, Pies and Cookies and were each given problems to solve based on the recipes given. We even ended with a ‘Show Stopper Challenge’ where we had to work out how the recipe had changed and for how many people it would serve. Marvellous maths skills were shown throughout the lesson, Prue and Paul would be proud!
