St Christopher’s Infant and Junior Schools annual Maths Week from January 16th to the 20th.

The week was spent doing a wide range of maths based activities across the curriculum. The Junior children enjoyed participating in a very active maths quiz during PE lessons and singing number songs during music. Maths was also used in French lessons and there were some fantastic activities which combined maths and art. An estimation challenge required the children to guess the length of the football pitch, the height of the goalposts and the capacity of the school aquarium. The children had great fun playing maths games every morning. Maths lessons were used to reinforce ‘using and applying’ skills through investigations and problem solving.

A ‘Beat the Teacher Challenge’ gave the students the chance to compete against the teacher in completing a times table square. There were some amazing results although no-one beat the teachers’ score in each year group! There were plenty of activities where Junior and Infant children worked together to show how important a one school approach to maths is. Children working together like this, teaching each other and learning from each other, gives them the valuable opportunity to verbalise their own mathematical thinking. Throughout the week, Infant children were focussing on maths in stories and on estimating and measuring. Children have been making estimates in the contexts of time, length and capacity and have had lots of fun finding out things, such as, how many times they can ride around the trike track in 100 seconds.

Special maths week Infant assemblies saw the teachers joining in to earn House points. Teachers had to estimate how many marshmallows they could hold in their hands and then count these at the end of 30 seconds. Well done to Mrs Jackson who was spot on with her estimate and earned a bonus 50 house points for Kestrel. Well done to all the children from the Infants who have taken up the home challenge to earn House points. At home, children have been estimating and measuring in contexts, such as, how long it takes to get changed.

The week ended in the Junior School with Maths Day when the school spent the whole day doing maths investigations and maths-art. Some of these were carried out with the children’s class whilst others were completed in small mixed-age groups, with the emphasis on shared learning and co-operation. The culmination of Maths Day was a whole school Maths Assembly, which included an Inter-House Maths Quiz. Parents were also involved and were given ideas to help their child practise the multiplication tables at home. The week was organised by John Roycroft, Jenny Calder and Simon McInroy who are the Subject Leaders for Maths at the Junior and Infant Schools.