As we move into the second half of the school year we start to formalise some of our Maths recording; beginning to capture our ideas in digits and number sentences. We’ve been loving Mrs Connolly’s 5 Green Bottles area this week and many of us have been singing along independently. We’ve been working in our odds and evens and looking at pairs and friends within numbers to help us understand this concept.

This year we wanted to maximise the amount of children involved in Maths competitions and challenges. On the final Friday of the half term all of our Year 5 children were involved in the team-building HFL challenge in the dance hall! Huge thanks to Mr Bridle our amazing volunteer for supporting with a fantastic afternoon!

We loved having parents in to take part in Maths Challenge evening today after school. Lots of open-ended tasks, number talk, possibility finding and reasoning taking place! Thanks so much to everyone for coming and getting involved!

This week 50 of our UKS2 children took part in the Primary Maths Challenge. The children worked individually to answer tricky questions. They really used their tough tortoise skills to engage all of their Maths knowledge and we are so proud of them! We look forward to seeing if any children get through to the next round!

Year 4 are learning their conceptual times tables at the moment! This is completely different to the rote learning they do daily using the Clare Christie method. They have been exploring different arrays for a given number and representing these using counters. What a fantastic way to recap that learning of grouping and sharing!

It’s not just the adults who get busy with manipulatives at ACE – on Wednesday at staff training we were all exploring some upper key stage 2 Maths in a practical discussion. We are always working to make sure our children have engaging, exciting and interactive lessons.

6P were making links between fractions, decimals and percentages this week – recapping key Y5 learning, whilst in the throes of our Y6 Fractions unit. As a class, we had in-depth discussions explaining our answers using reasoning, which the children thoroughly enjoyed. In the pictures, the children were having a ‘prove it’ challenge in pairs, proving that 125% = 1 1/4 = 1.25.

Each week our TTRs champions brandish the trophy to all of their friends. We’re not always looking for the speediest children but those who are the most accurate or who have made the most progress that week!

In Year 3 all of our children have chess lessons every week supporting them with their strategic thinking and positional language. The benefits of chess both from a mathematical thinking perspective but also a cultural capital one are numerous and varied. Hopefully your children can come home and beat you hands down! Mr Van Loo loves to take some of our budding chess players to compete in London – could this be you one day?

It’s been amazing to welcome our new children into school this week and welcome back lots of old faces. I’m pleased to report that many if our youngest children are already such keen mathematicians. We’ve been getting very physical and hands-on with our maths in provision this week.