Practising mathematics doesn't just help students develop academically, it's also a useful life skill. Here's a collection of lesson ideas and resources to help teachers get started.
In a world full of gadgets and technology it's easy to be lazy about things like adding numbers in your head. Even a simple calculator is often more favourable to counting on both hands.
But encouraging pupils to practise their mental maths doesn't just help them tackle increasingly complex mathematical problems, it's also a really useful life skill – whether that's checking your change or working out how long you have to wait for the next train.
So this week, we have a variety of resources designed to boost your pupils' agility with arithmetic.
Attempts to make maths more fun are essential to engage students in the subject from a young age. Primary students might enjoy a mental maths quiz in an audio format. It asks 15 questions that become progressively more difficult based on addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and time. If this works well and you would like to try more of this type of activity, further tests are available on the Teaching Packs website.
For secondary pupils, Mel Muldowney, one of the teachers behind the Just Maths website, suggests putting these 30 mental arithmetic questions on the board as a settling activity as students come into the room.
Continuing the theme of games, Muldowney also suggests: "If I have a few minutes before the bell, I play a game called 'Around the world' where two students stand up and have to answer a question that I call out (I make them up as we go along). If they are incorrect, they sit down and I choose another student as a challenger.
"I like doing this and I can really tailor the questions to the group and students. The aim is to remain standing and beat as many students as possible."
Games like snap or bingo are a great way to encourage your students to make mental calculations quickly and accurately. Try these eqiuvalent fractions snap cards or these that test division, multiplication, and solving equations.
There's also a set of maths challenge cards from Twinkl. They feature maths problems about ratio and proportion for students to solve using only their brains. For an extended activity, you could use the cards as templates for students to create their own.
The life skills element is essential – especially as financial education is making its way onto the curriculum. With this in mind, primary pupils might like to practise their arithmetic in the context of a class shop. Can pupils calculate the cost of two or three items in their heads? Can they work out what their change should be? This worksheet about adding money and this one about doubling the cost could be used to reinforce learning.
There's also a wide range of mental maths worksheets. This one by Mental Arithmetic is good for testing number bonds to 20, while this one is about ordering numbers from highest to lowest. Teacher Des Hegarty revises multiplication by 2, 5 and 10 in this handy resource while this final insight looks at increasing numbers by 10.
For older primary pupils, you might want to try a set of 8 mental maths tests created by Primary Leap. Each one has 12 questions that cover a variety of topics from money and measure to fractions and decimals. Here is a list of all the individual assessments: test 1; test 2; test 3; test 4; test 5; test 6; test 7; test 8.
For some creative inspiration, take a look at this poster and these display numbers to support learning of the times tables from one to 12.
Finally, the Guardian has a range of interactive lessons useful for revising mental maths strategies. These include: adding doubles, estimating, and identifying near-doubles. Use this resource to generate worksheets to test the rapid recall of addition and subtraction, and this one for multiplication and division.
