November brought with it our celebration of ‘Barvember’ and all things bar models in the school. Thank you to all of you who were able to join us for part of this celebration with our Families Workshop at the start of the month. Throughout the school, the regular practice of bar modelling and problem solving has increased the resilience and grit to solve increasingly difficult problems, through the use of a working frame called a bar model: this has included adults as well as children!
The workshop led to the introduction of Maths Ambassadors from Year 6, who shared their reasoning and understanding of a range of problems with families, demonstrating their ‘Maths Talk’. We’re looking forward to developing this role further over the coming months.
We’ve also relaunched the use of TTRockstars in KS2 to increase our fluency in times tables facts, through the use of weekly class battles. This has had great uptake from children and we can already see an increase in their accuracy and speed to solve calculations. We hope that you will continue to support them to represent their class in the weekly battles.
Another way to encourage Maths learning at home is through the free White Rose 1 minute Maths app, which provides a range of sets of questions to solve in short, sharp bursts. You might also like to look for Maths in the envrionment on your way home: for example can you spot the number 7 or can you estimate the number of lights on that house?
We would like to put up a display of children taking part in ‘Maths in the Wild’, as a competition over the Winter Holiday. Please send in photos of examples of Maths you have found or children completing Maths in other ways. Examples might be baking, counting in twos with socks or borrowing a Maths sack from the library and using that!
As part of the Essex Year of Numbers, Essex County Council have released an app called Essex Year of… This includes a Maths advent calendar with the chance to win daily Maths prizes for solving a daily problem. The app also has some guides for different areas of Maths to support with Maths learning at home.
Don’t forget to join us for our next family Maths workshop on the 25th January between 9 and 10 am. The focus will be Problem Solving in classes, followed by a multiplication and division workshop in the hall.
We will also be hosting a school wide Maths Week in March: more details coming soon!
