Parent/Carer Support

Today I would like to share one of my favourite teaching resources. NRICH.

NRICH is an innovative collaboration between the Faculties of Mathematics and Education at the University of Cambridge, part of the University’s Millennium Mathematics Project.

NRICH provides thousands of free online mathematics resources for ages 3 to 18, covering all stages of early years, primary and secondary school education – completely free and available to all.

Aims:

• Enrich and enhance the experience of the mathematics curriculum for all learners
• Develop mathematical thinking and problem-solving skills
• Offer challenging, inspiring and engaging activities
• Show rich mathematics in meaningful contexts
• Work in partnership with teachers, schools and other educational settings to share expertise

Maths at home

Whether you are a parent, a carer, a teacher, or have multiple ‘hats’, you will find that our latest Primary and Secondary Features contain a wealth of resources to support learners working mathematically at home. Each feature contains age-appropriate activities which have been grouped in the following ways:

• Just Jottings – to have a go at these activities, you need nothing more than pencil and paper. This is a great opportunity to encourage learners to think about different ways of representing their ideas and recording their findings. When doing mathematics, there is often a phase of ‘messy maths’ while working on a problem; the neatly written solutions that appear in maths textbooks only emerge after lots of scribbling, doodling and jotting!
• Interactive Games and Puzzles – these activities all include an online interactive environment, where learners can explore and play, in order to test out ideas and make discoveries. (You can read more about using interactivities to promote curiosity in our article.)
• Maths to Take Your Time Over – these activities are worth exploring over a few days or even a few weeks. Many of them are ‘low threshold high ceiling’, meaning they are easy to get started on, and they can be extended so may keep someone absorbed for a long time! Learners can keep coming back to the same activity, mulling ideas over in between periods of focused thinking, and recording their ideas and findings, whether independently or with support from you. Some low threshold high ceiling activities are appropriate over a range of ages so could be explored by several members of the family together.

• Print It Out – to get the most out of these activities, you need access to a printer (black and white copies are usually fine).

In addition, the Primary Feature includes:

• Homemade Maths – these activities need some everyday bits and pieces. Anything will do! You can use buttons, scraps of paper or even sweets as counters. Create your own digit cards from paper or card, and use Lego bricks instead of Multilink (interlocking cubes). If you have a printer you can print off number grids, circle templates, dotty grids, dominoes etc. from the printables page.