Squirrels 9th Feb

Date: 13th Feb 2023 @ 10:41am

Thursday 9th February 2023

It feels as if we are really springing into learning action now (pun intended!) and this term is when we need to do it so thank you for your support at home- it makes a difference to their learning potential. Which is why I have sent a few things home this week:

Y1&2 are bringing home a Grow the Code today. There is a parent letter attached so you can see what to do with it but in short, it is to promote rapid rercognition of our y1 phonemes and to help with spelling.

Y2 have had a couple of maths jobs. The ‘speed’ test is a way of them gaining confidence in their own mental maths. It matters less if it takes them 20mins or 2 mins right now as long as they feel more confident to tackle these calculations and become quicker over time. Record their time to see improvements. They can ask for a copy a week if they / you would like. Practice makes permanent!

We have learnt a new maths game today. We called it: chocolate chip cookies. Each player draws 5, then 4, then 3, then 2 cookies and finally 1 cookie in rows underneath each other. With a dice (or make a set of 6 little cards with numbers 1-6 on it and keep shuffling and take the top one), use the number rolled to add that many chocolate chips onto one row of cookies. Then the other person rolls and adds the dice amount of choc chips onto one row of their cookies. Keep going. The winner is the player with the most choc chips in total so there is a level of luck (roll of the dice) and strategy (if I roll 1, I want to put it on the least amount of cookies possible etc.)

The reason this game is good for their maths is: firstly they need to add up the total chocolate chips at the end. Encourage them to find number bonds. Encourage them to write it down. Y2 – encourage counting in 2s! Y1s- encourage holding a number in their head and counting on, pointing to each choc chip rather than using fingers. Y2s- look at the row of cookies as an array so this row has 4 equal groups of 3 choc chips = 3+3+3+3= 4x3=… If they can write it down like this, even better! Their times tables will come along so much quicker if they understand what each part of the calculation means.

I wonder if you fully understood maths when you were at school? I was good at learning a formula and applying it, but I am not sure I understood all the time why I was doing it. This has changed a lot in the few years since I was in primary. There is a clear progression to understand concepts by using ‘stuff’ first, then visuals, then more abstract (number sentences). Skipping a step doesn’t mean your child won’t understand a concept, but it often means they are less confident in manipulating it when faced with word problems. So if you are ever doing any maths at home, get ‘stuff’ out to create the number. In the classroom we use a lot of plastic cubes that fit together but also stones, shells, pencils, plastic animals – anything that allows them to see the number as ‘real’.

The next few weeks of maths is consolidating their understanding of addition (Y1), multiplication as repeated addition (Y2). What a great time to be a learner at Tarporley!

 

Tarporley CE Primary, Park Road, Tarporley, Cheshire, CW6 0AN

Tel: 01829 708188 | Email: admin@tarporleyce.cheshire.sch.uk

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