And now there's a new challenge. Some of my year 5 students are consistently achieving high scores at the stage 7 level, I will have to create something else for them to keep them challenged next year!

Maths update

I'm a year 4/5 teacher at a large multi-cultural primary school in Auckland. I've written 20 sets of number knowledge revision sheets ie enough for 20 weeks. Each set has 6 different levels ranging from early stage 4 to stage 7.

There are two parts to the sheet - one half is number knowledge practise, the other side is revision of geometry, measurement, statistics, number strategy ideas.

At my school, we use them as part of our weekly homework programme. We've used them successfully for over a year now. The children like seeing clear progress, the teachers report that their students are remembering more in for example geometry and measurement. (previously we have been frustrated at the difficulty our students had retaining the vocabulary and ideas in these areas)

If you're interested please contact me at janicec@chapeldowns.school.nz

The maths knowledge sheets have now gone out to 4 other schools. I'm about to graph the stages our year 4 - 6 are working at with number knowledge. The data looks like we've improved since the beginning of term 2 even.
A big oops! Did you know the sun set in the east? Just one of only a few mistakes appearing now. One year 6 has taken great delight in finding my mistakes - but there are less and less of them as I check and re-check! I shall win!
Our parents reported that they too sometimes struggle to help their children particularly with geometry and measurement because they're unsure of the vocabulary. Many of our families speak a language other than English at home.
Onwards and upwards.

About that weekly practise sheet: doing the other strands
I don't know how you cover measurement, geometry at your school, but it seems to me that however you do it, the children can easily forget the vocabulary. I mean how often do you hear children using words like symmetry or net in their casual conversations!

My class are enjoying this other aspect, but had forgotten for example, symmetry. I know this was covered last year because I saw lots of practical investigations in their classes on this. It's the vocabulary acquisition problem.
I just set up some geoboards and pegs on a table and a few children started making symmetrical patterns etc - that got the buzz going and they remembered the concept. Now I'm hoping that when we focus on geometry in term 4, we can move on developing the concept. I'm hoping they will be more confident about using the vocab as they discuss their investigations.
Here's hoping.

Well we're up and running in the Year 4-6 of the school! Every week the students take home their stage appropriate sheet to practise as part of their homework. On Friday, they get 4 minutes to do it. There's a real buzz in my classroom as so many are improving. One boy who at the beginning of the year scored very slow on the IKAN assessment is now consistently getting around 45 out of 50 at stage 4. He's just bursting with a sense of achievement. This is now being reflected in his growing confidence in developing part-whole strategies.
This weekly practise sheet is only one of my strategies of course. This boy has regular group teaching, lots of working with materials etc. , regular practise of stage appropriate number knowledge and strategies through games, investigations etc.

We held a parent's 'guided walk-through' during maths time at a our school recently and were overwhelmed with parents particularly dads. This was a very positive time. So we know that many parents are interested in helping their children with their maths. We want to capitalize on this.

As Lester Flockton repeatedly points out we have the students for only about 20% of their waking hours. That means we don't have them for 80% of their waking hours!

Maths number knowledge

This is my first blog! A whole new adventure awaits. A big thanks to Jacqui Sharp for helping me to set this up. To be honest, it's taken a couple of weeks to get back to this. Also to Trish McInnes my DP at Chapel Downs Primary School who encourages me when I come up with yet another idea!

I've been very busy creating a maths resource for my clever classroom. Not sure about this name! I liked the alliteration!

When my Year 4/5 class did the IKAN (NZ number knowledge assessment) earlier in the year they did OK on the basic facts questions but really struggled with the others - place value, fraction identification. I think its because historically the focus has been on learning their basic facts. Parents have felt more comfortable with this and often 'learning your basic facts' has become a homework task.
I also have a feeling that teachers are more comfortable with basic facts and maybe aren't so sure about place value.

It seemed to me that the resource my school had been using needed to be replaced with something more aligned with the current New Zealand Maths Curriculum. For year 4-6 children a 'basic facts' sheet was on the reverse side of the weekly homework sheet. These were practised during the week and then tested on Friday.

I wanted to include measurement and geometry also. This is one way to support my students (many who are ESOL) to learn the wide range of vocabulary required in this strand. Also I think the children forget during the year. This way the words and concepts are in front of them each week.

So I launched myself into this big project! I wanted to create 1o sets of questions covering number knowledge and measurement and geometry knowledge for stage 4 and 5
Projects have a habit of growing! I've now created 10 sets for each of these stages:
stage 4, stage 5, stage 5-6 (basically stage 6 without the decimals) stage 6, stage 6+

So far I have completed stage 4. I have a 'working design' for stage 5, stage 5-6, stage 6 and stage 6+ but these ones need to be tidied up and have the measurement and geometry aspect added.

Here is what the sheet looks like

I have found these really helpful to identify gaps. This informs my planning and teaching very specifically.

My stage 4 measurement and geometry questions are labelled as moving towards level 2.

In my opinion level 1 can't really be easily written up in this sort of format. Mostly the items are early level 2.

Anyway, if you're interested in this resource let me know. It is available for non-commerical use in the classroom.
Janice Corbett