World Maths Day Blog
Today, 23rd March, marks World Maths Day, a fantastic opportunity to focus on the importance of maths in our daily lives, and more specifically, in a child’s academic journey. The 11+ exam includes challenging maths sections that test a variety of skills from problem-solving to data handling. In light of this, here are some effective maths tips for parents to help your child excel.
Key Topics:
Master Basic Operations:
-Ensure your child is comfortable with addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. We recommend children know up to their 13 times tables. Practicing times tables on a daily basis can enhance speed and accuracy.
-Focus on conversions between fractions, decimals and percentages. Use practical examples like shopping discounts or baking recipes over the Easter Holidays to make these concepts relatable for your child.
Problem-Solving:
-Engage your child with puzzles and games that require logical reasoning, such as sudoku or chess. These activities improve their ability to think logically and strategically.
-Encourage your child to write down each step when solving complex problems. This approach can help manage more challenging questions without getting overwhelmed.
Data Handling:
-Ensure your child is comfortable with how to read and interpret data from bar charts, line graphs and pie charts, as it is likely these types of questions will come up in the 11+ entrance exam.
-We’d suggest children to create their own charts from collected data, like daily temperatures or household chores.
Shapes:
-Familiarise your child with different types of shapes and their properties, like angles, sides and terminology, such as perpendicular, parallel.
-Practice calculating the perimeter, area, and volume of various shapes. Understanding the transformations reflection, rotation and translation will not only be beneficial for maths questions, but for the Non-Verbal reasoning component of the 11+ exam too.
Algebra:
-Algebra will be a new concept to many primary school children. We recommend to start with simple expressions and equations, and build up the complexity. Algebra is a topic where practice makes perfect. Exposing your child to algebraic expressions on a regular basis will help their speed and accuracy for when the real 11+ exam takes place.
Making maths engaging:
-Playing board games such as Monopoly and card games such as Uno can be both fun and educational.
-Cooking with Maths involves measuring ingredients, doubling or halving recipes and calculating cooking times, which incorporate practical applications of maths. This approach allows children to see the tangible results of their calculations, making the learning experience more rewarding.
-With the spring approaching, it is a good opportunity to go on walks. Take maths learning outside and measure distances, and calculate the area and perimeter of a garden, or a field, for example.
How KSOL can help:
It is important to recognise that maths is not only vital for the 11+ entrance exam, but for further education, and in life. With our personalised online programmes, your child is tested on a variety of maths topics, with video lessons provided for further help. This ensures consistent practice of tricky topic areas, with detailed written explanations provided for any incorrect answers. Remember, if you have any concerns, we recommend not only to reach out to your child’s allocated tutor, but also to utilise their student history tab, which stores any questions your child found challenging.
For further help on specific topic areas, we have 7 different maths activity packs, primarily designed for children in Year 5. They cover Ratio and Money, Mean, Mode and Median, and as Quick as you can speed tests, designed to boost speed and accuracy. Click here to explore our range!
If you have any further questions regarding maths, or anything concerning the 11+ entrance exam, don’t hesitate to give one of our friendly advisors a call on 0121 733 6558!