1. Numeracy Workshop Tuesday 19th Sept
Purpose of evening – flavour of what we do in class relating to mental maths. The reason we have decided to run this workshop is that we get asked regularly by parents how to further support their child with mental maths and we wanted to give you some ideas. This is not a workshop to add extra homework, it is just to give you some pointers and how you choose to use them is entirely up to you.

2. Our Aims
Inform you of some of the key mental maths strategies we will focus on, revisit and reinforce in class.
Give you an insight into how we approach these in class.
Provide you with some strategies to help your child at home.
We want to give you a little flavour of what we do in class and what we feel are the key mental maths strategies to focus on, revisit and reinforce. We hope to provide some ideas on how you can help support your child at home, but just to reiterate this is not to add any homework – some of these strategies are resource free and can be practised in the car.

3. Key Mental Maths Strategies
Counting on and back
Number bonds
Bridging over 10
Partitioning
Doubling and halving
Multiplication Tables
This is not an exclusive list or indeed an all inclusive list – however, these key skills are the foundations of mental maths and allow our pupils to go on and tackle more complicated problems as they become more confident, more efficient and more accurate.

4. We want our pupils to be:
Confident in their mental maths abilities – engaged, challenged and developing new skills.
Increasingly accurate and developing rapid recall skills.
Developing the vocabulary to explain their processes.
Confidence is key, we want pupils to feel engaged and challenged and develop new skills to allow them to grow in confidence.
Accuracy and rapid recall then become more important to increase their efficiency when tackling calculations.
Mathematical language is a key feature of the curriculum, pupils can learn so much from their peers and collaboratively working in maths to develop strategies. It is also a good way for a teacher to assess pupils as explaining how they found an answer is a key skill.

5. How we can help.
Equip pupils with appropriate and relevant mathematical language.
Teach and use different strategies in class.
Practise mental maths daily.
Use a wide variety of resources.
We use the same common language across the cluster which was developed alongside St Ninians. We expose them to range of words that mean the same thing in maths – refer to booklets in goody bag.
We will teach them a wide range of strategies and allow them to practise these until they find the ones that work best for them.
Daily practise is key.
Games, interactive maths – keep them engaged.

6. How you can help.
Revise and consolidate mental maths strategies at home.
Look for Maths and Numeracy ‘in real life’ such as menus, adverts, etc.
Play maths games.
Discuss how your child approaches calculations and allow them to explain their thinking.
Daily practise at home – in the car – at the dinner table.
Use menus to open a chat about a maths – can I afford a starter and main? What can I buy with £10 etc?
Plenty of games online – snakes and ladders, monopoly etc.
Ask you children to talk you through their maths – especially if it seems different to how you would approach it.

7. Counting on and Counting Back
Strategy 1
Counting on and Counting Back

8. What is counting on? Mental maths strategy to add two numbers.
Pupils will learn that it is generally easier to count on from the larger number.
We need to regularly revisit ‘counting on strategies’ to encourage pupils to adopt more efficient approaches.
Children first meet this by beginning at one and counting on in ones.
They then extend this by:
Beginning at different numbers.
Counting forwards and backwards.
Counting in twos, fives, tens, hundreds and so on.
Counting multiples helps with multiplication facts and division.
Foundation of many mathematical concepts such as fractions, algebra at later stages.

9. What is counting back?
A method of learning subtraction by counting backwards from the first number in the problem to get the answer.
The children are encouraged to use their knowledge of number bonds. For example, if they know 7+8=15, they should be able to identify that 15 subtract 8=7. Also, children are taught to look for patterns within numbers. If they know 6-4=2, they should see that 16-4=12 and 86-4=82. If however they find this tricky, children are taught to count backwards on a number line.

10. Activities Snap/click counting Mexican Wave counting Buzz
Counting stick
Hundred squares
Ball games
Teacher to explain counting on and back activities

11. Strategy 2
Partitioning

12. What is partitioning?
Partitioning is splitting numbers into smaller units so they’re easier to work with.
It is important for learners to know that numbers can be partitioned into, for example, hundreds, tens and units, so that 326 =
This strategy helps when adding and subtracting. For example: Hold the 46 in head and add 10, then add 3. Similarly Hold the 59 in your head and subtract 20, then subtract 5.
This helps them see numbers as wholes rather than single digits in a column.
Partitioning numbers can be a useful strategy for adding and subtracting pairs of numbers.
Some children will partition both numbers, although it can be helpful to keep the first number as it is and partition just the second number.
Place value knowledge is reinforced here and pupils must have a good grasp of place value to help with this skill.

13. Activities Dice games Place value cards Human place value
Number investigations
Dice games –roll 3 die. Children make different numbers, aiming to write largest digit in hundreds column.
Place value cards – teacher says a number and children record the digits in the correct column.
Human place value – children hold up digit cards as a group and are challenged to add 4 tens, take away 3 hundreds etc.
Number investigations – teacher calls out a number and children show how they would partition that number on their whiteboards. Eg 346… or or

14. Strategy 3
Number Bonds

15. What are number bonds? Any 2 numbers that add together.
There are important number bonds that we want to become so familiar that a child can recognise it and complete it almost instantly.
It is key at this stage that our pupils develop automatic recall of number bonds to 10 and 20.
We are also reinforcing and building on number bonds within 20.

16. Examples
6 + 4 = 10
= 20
7 + 8 = 15
= 20
= 17
Knowing these will allow pupils to master other number facts.

17. Activities Ball games Ping pong Board games Dice games Playing cards
Bingo
Ball games- Hot potato
Ping Pong- partner games. Child calls question, partner answers or gives linking fact.
Board games- snakes and ladders type of games
Card games- play pontoons (add cards to reach 21)
Bingo – children choose 9 numbers between teacher calls out a number bond and children mark off if they have the answer.

18. Strategy 4
Bridging through 10

19. What is bridging through 10?
so becomes 7 add 3 (number bonds to 10) the 3 has been used from the 6.  You then need to add on the remaining 3, giving 13.
6+5 becomes 6+4+1
76+7 becomes
becomes
In order to do this pupils must have a secure knowledge of number bonds and partitioning.
Pupils can use multiples of tens as ‘landmarks’ and can visualise jumping to them. For example is worked out in 2 jumps, first to 50 and then to 52. We hope that children will become quicker and more confident in this as they progress. If they find this tricky they can benefit from using a hundred square.

20. Strategy 5
Doubling and Halving

21. Why learn doubling and halving?
Multiplying by 2.
Twice as many.
Dividing a number by 2.
The children are currently working on doubles within a hundred. To make this active or fun for the children we use ball games. We also clap doubles to 20. Children are encouraged to recognise patterns within doubles. For example, if children know double 4, they can work out double 40. Partitioning is also useful when doubling. So double 32 can be partitioned into double 30 plus double 2.
The ability to double and half numbers is a useful skill for multiplication and division.
Most people find doubles the easiest multiplication calculation to remember. This is the basis for future learning further up the school about quarters of numbers and calculating 50% and 25%.

22. Examples
Double all numbers to 10 and 20 and find corresponding halves such as double 7, half of 14.
Double multiples of 10 to 100 and find corresponding halves such as double 40.
Double multiples of 5 such as double 85, half of 170.
If learners have an instant recall of doubles, they can use this when adding two numbers that are very close to each other.
So knowing that 6+ 6 = 12, they can be encouraged to use this to help them find rather than use a counting on strategy or bridging through 10.

23. Activities Ball games ‘Ping Pong’ maths with a partner
Explain ball games and ping pong maths. Follow link to topmarks double activity.

24. Multiplication Tables
Strategy 6
Multiplication Tables

25. Multiplication
At this stage we want the pupils to know the 2, 3, 4, 5 and 10 multiplication tables.
Daily practice is key both at school and at home to improve fluent recall of multiplication facts.
Multiplication and division are inverse operations.
Because good knowledge of multiplication facts underpins all other multiplication and division calculations, written and mental, it is important that learners commit the tables to memory.
Fluent recall of multiplication facts relies on regular opportunities for practice.
Generally, frequent short sessions are more effective than longer, less frequent sessions.
We try to provide practice that involves as wide a variety of activities, situations, questions and language as possible.
As division and multiplication are inverse operations we want to encourage our pupils to recall multiplication facts almost instantly as they should then be able to recall the corresponding division facts.
We encourage and help learners to learn that 3 multiplied by 4 is the same as 4 times 3 as this reduces the facts they need to remember.

26. Activities
Chanting tables ( active) – proven to help pupils with memorising tables.
Dice games
Ball games
Computer games
Flash cards
Bingo
Other resources we use in school are:
Dominoes
Board games
Bare in mind that not all children will be able to memorise all multiplication tables immediately. It will take time and lots of practise. In the meantime, children do have access to displays of the multiplication tables but are continually encouraged to memorise them where possible.

27. How to help at home.
Practise tables whenever it is convenient – car, dinner table, out and about.
Number bonds – ask lots of questions!
Mathematical language – let the children explain what they are doing.
Real life – shopping, weighing, measuring carpets, reading timetables, menus etc.
Counting money - budgeting

28. Thank you for listening.
Have a look at some of the resources we use with the children.
Feel free to ask any questions.
Please complete an evaluation form.
Please see ‘Common Language Methodology’ in pack.