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