maths activities

How to smooth the transition from Year 6 to 7 maths

It’s never easy for students to move from Year 6 to Year 7.  For the vast majority, they move from being the biggest fish in a little pond to small fry in what feels like an ocean!  Add to that the fact that their last two years of primary school… Read More

How to…prepare for the new times tables test

In January, the UK Government announced plans to test every pupil in England on their times tables before leaving primary school. An effective way to prepare pupils for the new times tables tests is by using the new Collins' Times Tables Simulator Read More

Presenting Data – How your students can display detail

As sad as it may seem, these days no one seems to have enough time to look at things in detail, from text language to finding information, we want to know what we need to know as quickly as possible. Maths has been doing this for some time now with… Read More

Packing for the holidays

The ‘travelling to relatives’ season is nearly upon us. With this comes the need to pack suitcases and make sure you can fit everything in without leaving any important Christmas items behind. Packing is a very logical mathematical exercise and when packing anything from suitcases, the boot of your car,… Read More

Maths – Enrichment Games

Maths is fun to many anyway but you can make it even more fun and develop a deeper understanding of the processes involved by introducing more fun and practical activities. There are many ways to introduce fun activities and here, we share six of our favourites. Activity One: Function Steps… Read More

Maths – Scaling up

Some tasks can be mind-numbingly tedious but sometimes have to be done. Here, we pose some questions that the more curious pupils might ask and set about answering them in an easy and roughly accurate way. Activity: Scaling Up Suitable for: Year 3 to Year 6 Learning… Read More

Maths – Multiplying and dividing

When I was young and first learning about multiplication, I was told to think of multiplication as ‘sets of’ items or numbers. Whilst this approach has lost a little of its appeal these days, the principle is useful in another way of doing division. Activity: Dividing Using Grids… Read More

Maths – Statistics

If you were to try to find out the statistics for how many people like strawberries in the UK, it would be very difficult, it not impossible, to ask everyone and publish the results. Because of the difficulties, market researchers use a process called ‘sampling’. Using this process they ask… Read More

Maths – In My Life

It will come as a surprise to us all how much time in our lives we spend doing mundane things. In this activity the pupils will estimate how much time they spend doing a regular activity in a day and then scale it up to see how much time they… Read More

Maths – Constructing 2D Shapes

Drawing a 2D shape accurately can be a nightmare but there are ways to draw them accurately that are fun too. In these activities the pupils will accurately construct several regular 2D shapes. Suitable for: Year 4 to Year 6 Learning Focus: Be able to use a compass… Read More