YEAR 5 MATHS

Our Maths Curriculum

We follow the White Rose Maths Curriculum, which has free video resources for each maths objective available to watch here, to revise, catch-up... or practice ahead of time!: White Rose Year 5 videos.

Maths Fundamentals Practice

Practicing the fundamental mental maths skills - such as times tables - that support our calculation and problem-solving is an important job that can be done every day at home. We have uploaded a series of short tests that your child can try and time themselves with here: Maths Fundamentals Quick Quizzes. Every week Year 5 also practice our calculation skills so that we don't get rusty: download all the BEAT THAT MATHS! quizzes here! Year 5 do Level 4 and 5 (L4 and L5 are written on the bottom right-hand corner). There is also Times Tables Rockstars - a site full of maths games and activities. Every child has a login for this.

Online Catch-up Lessons To Try!

From the White Rose Maths Curriculum, here are some lesson activities from the Year 5 curriculum that can be used at home to warm up, catch-up or extend your child's skills.

What are 'fluency, mastery and reasoning'?

Fluency relates to the learning and practice of a new mathematical skill: starting off with modelling how to do it, then doing the calculations together and talking; next, working on examples from the simple and building up step-by-step to more challenging examples, adding just one extra bit of difficulty to the questions at each step. This should bring your child to mastery of that mathematical skill: they feel confident they can use it, and they can demonstrate this. To assess this, we ask the pupils to show their reasoning: talking through the steps to take and explaining how they did something; proving their answers; and knowing which skill to use to solve investigations.

How do I help my child learn Maths if I am not sure?

This is a challenging subject and at first it may seem like a daunting task. However, it is a craft that you can learn. The key skills required are not an advanced mathematical knowledge, but the same skills that our children need to succeed at school:

• Patience is your friend - don't be too hard on yourself;
• Working step-by-step so that one new skill helps build to the next;
• Taking your time, working together, talking things through;
• Representing calculations using apparatus or drawings;
• Being positive about your own progress;
• Learning from mistakes and seeing them as opportunities;
• Building fluency in one skill before moving on to the next;
• Then trying some reasoning and investigation activities to exercise that skill;
• Thinking of or using the skill in a real-life context.
• If you are getting stuck, go back and check that your child's knowledge of previous steps is secure.

If a mathematical concept is challenging in one session, then have a break and come back to it the next day. It takes as long as it takes, and there is no true set road-map of how much you or your child 'should' be able to do by a certain age, contrary to what public officials might like to say. If you can't go forwards, try going back and you'll find your path.

How to use maths plans at home

These plans are well-written guides to learning and model fairly accurately how we would learn maths concepts in class.

1. Each unit begins with an explanation of the idea of teaching maths mastery.
2. It then gives a clear list of the mathematical concepts that Year 5 would cover. This list is in an order that should build step-by-step, with pupils able to use things they have learnt at the start to support the skills they learn later on.
3. Next, there is a page for each concept with a set of activities that help develop fluency in that skill. There is a list of helpful questions that you can use as you talk with your child about these fluency questions. Do the tasks together: the more that you and your child can talk about their learning, the better they will master it.
4. On the next page, there are some reasoning puzzles and investigations, which get your child to make use of their skill once they have become fluent with it. For example, they ask the children to check whether a character has correctly solved a calculation, and to spot the errors and explain them. Or, they might set a more open-ended investigation, to find all the possible solutions to a puzzle, or to prove whether a statement is true, false, or sometimes true under certain circumstances. One of these reasoning puzzles would normally take a full maths lesson to do it justice. Sometimes, 'solving' them too quickly can lead able mathematicians to miss interesting patterns or novel solutions.
5. White Rose have provided new day-by-day video tutorials to support your learning.