The Irish Primary School Curriculum in Maths is made up of a number of strands:
Number, Measurement, Shape and space, Data and Algebra.
Learning Addition and Subtraction Tables is a very important aspect of learning maths in 2nd Class.
Adding and taking away tens and units is the ‘big deal’ in the second class maths curriculum. This is made so much easier if the children know their tables ‘upside down and inside out’.
It means when I go on to teach adding tens and units the children can focus on ‘the method’ and not on the ‘sum’. It can be disheartening for a child to get ‘the method’ right but the answer wrong because of a mistake in computation.
I realise the early tables can be very easy for children who have an aptitude for maths. Learning tables is like climbing a mountain – and we are in the foothills at the moment! I will be sending home tables for homework from the beginning of October. We have been revising adding and taking away to 5, thoroughly in school during the month of September.
The children can practise tables for homework in a variety of ways; singing the table, using their hands to keep them on track i.e. where they are in the table, lollipop sticks, number line and table book.
We use Joyce O’Hara’s cd: Joyce O’Hara’s Learn Through Song
I am sending home a laminated A4 page of the tables, in case your child does not have a table book. Please keep these carefully.
I will also make a lot of use of the addition square.
We start off gradually but we are working towards the challenge of a ‘Five Minute Maths Frenzy’!
Five Minute Maths Frenzy
The children use concrete materials to help us understand the maths we do in a ‘hands on’ and practical way. Each child has a Number Bag containing a number line and hundred square, a clock, unifix cubes, lollipop sticks, dice, pegs and a peg board. We also keep a dry board marker and a cloth in this bag, for working on individual whiteboards.
Initially I encourages the children to try Free Play with the contents of the bags. This is popular on wet days when we can’t go out to the yard. We can make patterns and constructions. We can also play dice games like ‘Race for 100’. One of the advantages of familiarity with the contents of the bags is that when we go to ‘work’ with them, the children are less inclined to play around with them, as they have had plenty of opportunities to do this already.
Children’s Work
Here is some examples of the Free Play the children did today. The results certainly brightened up a rather wet lunch time for me. Can you spot the ‘smiley face’ by Zac and ‘teacher teaching the children’ by Kila? Can you see the imaginative ‘cup cakes’ and robots?
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