Get your maths lesson going with a bang!
Use a starter to engage children’s maths brains, rehearse lesson-specific skills, or to keep key skills simmering.
- A short burst of buzzy, appealing, quick-fire question-and-answers gets children properly limbered up and ready to learn.
- Awaken prior learning that children are about to apply.
- A planned structure to cover the year’s key skills, maintaining fluency even when these topics have not been taught for a while.
We provide:
- A bank of 12 weeks of starters available under Key Skill headings.
- A set of fun ‘quick-fire tests’, so children can find out if they have beaten their personal best scores each week.
For now – have a look at some examples….
Each starter takes a particular times table as its focus. We aim to practise both multiplication facts, e.g. 3 x 4 is what? And also division facts, e.g. How many 3s in 12? For the easier tables, e.g. 2x and 5x, we add some tricky questions. These are intended to pose a challenge outside simple recall of facts and some children will love this. Encourage all children to have a go!
Different addition and subtraction facts are rehearsed in the starters. These include: number bonds to 10, number bonds to 20, pairs of numbers adding to make numbers up to 20 and bonds to the next multiple of ten. Occasional 'tricky questions' challenge children to go beyond simple fact recall.
Children rehearse their known facts, e.g. double 6 is 12 and half of 18 is 9. They also practise quick mental calculation involving doubling and halving, e.g. half of 44 or double 23. Some may involve simple partitioning, e.g. double 15.
Each starter takes a particular times table as its focus. We aim to practice both multiplication facts, e.g. 3 x 6 is what? And also division facts, e.g. how many 6s in 18? For the easier tables, e.g. 2x and 5x, we add some tricky questions. These are intended to pose a challenge outside simple recall of facts and some children will love this. Encourage all children to have a go!
Children estimate where to place 3-digit and 4-digit numbers on a line. They extend this to decimals later in the year. They fill in missing numbers in place value calculations, e.g. Which of these could be the value of the missing digit in 54_7? (a) 4 (b) 30 (c) 600 Children also round numbers to the nearest 10, 100 or 1000, and, later in the year, they round decimal numbers to the nearest whole number.
Children practice mental calculation strategies in the context of 2-digit numbers, including rounding and adjusting, e.g. 45 + 19 and counting up subtraction, e.g. 72 - 56. They also rehearse the use of place value in addition and subtraction, e.g. 4357 + 400 or 4357 + 5. This includes crossing g boundaries, e.g. 5999 + 1 or 2003 - 4.