As part of SSAS Maths Week, our children were raising money for the NSPCC, culminating in our “Dress Up for Digits” Day on Thursday.
We learned about the crucial work of the NSPCC to help children who are less fortunate and prayed that other children may receive what they need to be happy and healthy. The money raised could help the NSPCC run its Speak out Stay safe programme to help children understand what abuse is and what to do if they’re scared or worried and give us a chance to live out Caring for the Poor and Vulnerable, one of our Catholic Social Teaching focuses. Thank you to Mrs Mannering for organising such an exciting Maths Week for us all – we have learnt so much about real life Maths and have had a lot of fun at the same time!
In Year 1, the children had so much fun dressing up in numbers, shapes and digits.
Their Maths learning was based around Jelly Beans. They decided which was our favourite colour/flavour of Jelly Bean and then represented our favourite colours using multi-link cubes. They then created a graph and analysed the data collected
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In Year 2, the children thoroughly enjoyed our whole-school maths book ‘How many Jelly Beans’ which inspired all our maths work this week. It was lots of fun creating tally charts, pictograms and bar models using jelly beans. It was even more fun having jelly beans as a treat afterwards!!
Year 3 had a blast celebrating Number Day! In Maths, they worked with a partner to count a bunch of colourful jelly beans in an envelope and wrote down each colour as a fraction. To make things even more exciting, they compared and arranged these fractions from smallest to largest, reinforcing their understanding of fractions. Finally, they created a bar chart illustrating their jelly bean findings!
They also made their own maths board games and went on a jelly bean number hunt around the school grounds. Later they played number games outside in the playground where they did a number of numeracy related activities such as counting the number of hula hoops they could do, or counting how many times they could catch a tennis ball. It was great fun!
Year 4 began Maths week with an exciting outdoor orienteering activity. They worked with a partner to use a map of our school grounds and to answer questions about Geometry.
Later, they used their Maths skills in a cooking activity. They used the weighing scales to carefully measure out the ingredients and their knowledge of telling the time was also important. They used a recipe for gluten and dairy free focaccia bread, as we wanted everyone to be able to take part in this activity, showing our school values of Unity and Respect. They adapted the recipe that they had been given by adding extra toppings to their focaccia bread. The finished focaccia bread was delicious!
On Thursday, they came to school in clothes with patterns or numbers on them. They read a book called ‘How many Jellybeans?’ and estimated how many jelly beans there were in a jar.
They also explored fractions, using coloured counters to represent the jellybeans.
Year 5 enjoyed participating in maths themed activities including orienteering around the school, completing different maths activities at each stage. They also read our school maths-themed book: How Many Jelly Beans?
Year 6 were busy inside and out with maths-based activities. For PE, the children took part in a special orienteering lesson where the clues were all mathematical. In their maths lessons, they have been investigating 3-d shapes and they created nets which they then made into cuboids and more. (These skills may come in useful in their upcoming Design & Technology lessons!). The children rounded off the week by heading to Bletchley Park – virtually, of course! The children took part in a code-breaking escape room activity as well as a Times Table Rockstars special contest – against Mr Hegarty. Suffice to say, competition was fierce with the pupils average score just about beating out their teacher over the 30-minute playing time.
