Developing a Feeling for Number

These resources from Shropshire Centre for Mathematics Education provide a framework which offers a curriculum, to aid arithmetical development, that is consistent with the broad principles of an activity-based, interactive, problem solving curriculum.

The underlying philosophy behind these activities is that the primary years are the time for children to explore and investigate number, constructing ideas which can form the basis for their own invented strategies that will enable them to become confident and efficient manipulators of number.

Developing a Feeling for Number

This booklet contains ideas for use with students who are beginning to build upon early understandings of number to do with counting, addition and subtraction. It is concerned with the basic requirements of flexible mental calculation as building blocks for the development of more complex operations in which students may need to resort to pencil and paper.

The 'basics' consist of:

*recall of number bonds

*an understanding of place value

*the relationship between multiplication and addition and division

*recall of multiplication facts

*extending the process of partitioning numbers to solving long multiplication problems

*the confident use of all four operations with single digits.

Working on the games and puzzles typically requires students to make sensible decisions by referring to the purpose of the activity and, as a result, students engage in the mathematical demands of problem solving.

Developing a Feeling for Number: Key Stage Two

This booklet builds upon the activities previously presented and the provision of games and activities is a continuing, though diminishing element of the Key Stage Two programme. The extension of these activities into investigative and problem solving tasks that was begun during Key Stage One also continues, with students being involved in the design and production of alternative versions of games which will generally be for each other and occasionally for younger students in the school.

Increasingly, at Key Stage Two, provision of situations in which the attention to pattern and relations (algebra) is the key focus are addressed, which will necessarily involve purposeful, repeated calculations, usually of a mental nature.

Contents include: calculating strategies, number bonds, place value, multiplication and division, all four operations and number patterns.