Dear 3EE parents,
This term’s maths workbooks should have come home today with your child as we no longer need them in school (we are moving onto the next term’s workbook). Please do not be alarmed that they are not completely filled in and some lessons appear to be missed - this is in part because they are designed for schools who have 5 maths lessons in English each week. It is also because we use other resources to carry out investigations and work on understanding concepts so not everything is recorded in this workbook. They can be kept at home and used as you wish. It shows visually some of the practical resources we use in school to support the children’s understanding of column calculations and to show them what multiplication and division actually mean. It is important that children understand what is happening numerically when they add, subtract, divide and multiply so if you choose to do anything on maths at home I would encourage you to use physical resources to support their understanding. They don’t need to be special maths objects and actually often children enjoy using things they’ve collected or that are intended for other things, e.g. stones, pasta, buttons etc. It can be helpful to use base 10 equipment (hundreds, tens and units) if practising column calculations and there are many different sets available and online visual tools, for example a free visual tool is at:
https://www.coolmath4kids.com/manipulatives/base-ten-blocks
and physical sets are available to purchase for example https://www.amazon.co.uk/Base-Ten-Dienes-Blocks-Group/dp/B002W6TFO2.
Real coins are also a great tool (of any currency) as not only do they provide 1, 10 and 100 counters to show place value it improves the children’s understanding of money and real world calculations.
On the workbooks there is a target for each child which I will also stick on their next school maths workbook to remind them what to focus on. This book is not intended as extra homework, it is a chance for you to see what we have been learning in maths and also how we teach different concepts so you can support your children if they ask for help. There are textbooks which accompany the workbooks and explain the ideas in more detail.
Many thanks for your ongoing support,
Ruthy Trevitt