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Maths Week England

Maths Week England has been celebrated throughout the school with opportunities for all pupils to engage in active investigations promoting a love of problem solving!

In the Nursery the children have been Super Shape Detectives! They played lots of ‘hide the shape’ games where they had to guess which shape was missing. They also made pictures, paintings and cards using different shapes. Miss Daniels took them on a shape hunt around the Pre-Prep School where we found stars, circles, rectangles and squares. The Reception class went on a maths hunt, counting the animals and plants hidden around Pre-Prep and used their addition skills to discover the total number of animals. Year 1 pupils enjoyed Maths Week England’s online number and shape activities. All the children took part in a maths quiz, which involved counting, number recognition and problem solving. They also played games to help them learn their number bonds to 10, using the Numberjacks app on the mini iPads. In Year 2 the children played lots of Maths games including being involved in a competition on the app Sumdog, competing against over 2452 other classes across the U.K!

In the Prep School, Year 3 created the characters Fiona and Toby who are Fraction Friends and who show that fractions are equal parts of a whole. The students used whole pieces of paper and decided how many equal parts to cut them into. They then used every part of the paper to make sure when the different parts were added together they would make a whole. Year 4 children took their Maths outside where they participated in a game of Backwards Bingo. The students had the answers … and their job was to hunt for the questions hidden around the playground! They were able to practice their Maths skills and their teamwork skills in order to find the all the clues! They also created Factor Bugs using their knowledge of the times tables.

Year 5 had an exciting opportunity to take part in a Maths is Magic workshop with Douglas Buchanan. It was an interactive session with several puzzles to solve and some very surprising outcomes! The workshop was exciting and our young mathematicians were encouraged to use their big brains to ‘think outside the box’! Some of the problems and tricks involved using a deck of cards, which has inspired them to learn even more! They also tried their hands at creating The Möbius strip (also called the twisted cylinder) that looks like an infinite loop. Once they started creating shapes, they couldn’t stop; they made double loops, linking loops and even rectangles! And finally, our Year 6 students were introduced to Brooklyn, and found out how her maths skills and hobbies helped her get a job as a data analyst at Just Eat! Year 6 got to have a go at being data analysts themselves: they worked in teams to find the mean averages of different sets of data, which helped them advise the marketing team on the strategy they should take for their next advert. A fantastic way to learn real-life mathematical lessons!