Helping your child in Year 5 or Year 6 (classes 7 to 12 - ages 9 to 11)

In these years, your child is likely to be working on:

• tables up to 10x10, and using what they know to help multiply and divide bigger numbers in their head and on paper
• understanding decimals (for instance that 1.07 is one and seven hundredths) and using them, particularly in measurement
• addition, subtraction, multiplication and division with decimals, often in measurement or money
• how and when to use a calculator; understanding the answers they get and checking that they make sense
• simple problems about ratio, such as “you need 2 eggs, 300ml milk and 240g flour to make pancakes for 4 people. What do you need for 6?”
• beginning to understand simple percentages, for instance that 10% of £25 is £2.50
• how to estimate answers, for instance that the cost of 29 calculators at £3.95 each will be roughly 30x£4 = £120
• measuring angles with a protractor
• working out the areas of simple shapes like rectangles and triangles
• collecting numerical information and putting it into tables, graphs and charts

 The really important things in these years are:

For children to grow in confidence in sorting out what to do and how to do it when they are faced with a problem is: 

1. That they begin to see connections, for instance that:

• addition ‘reverses’ subtraction, or multiplication ‘undoes’ division
• fractions, decimals, ratios and percentages are just different ways of saying the same thing

2. That they have many opportunities to use their maths at home, at the shops, on trips and visits and to see numbers and shape, and measurement and graphs at work in the world around them