Fostering a Love of Maths

There was a celebration of all things Maths at Truro School Prep as pupils and staff shared in successes. Children in Key Stage 2 have been challenged by Mr Goddard to “turn their grids green” in the online numeracy programme Times Tables Rock Stars (TTRS). This has involved pupils working hard to complete their tables within a time limit; once they have correctly answered questions within a set table, the corresponding line on their TTRS grid turns green.

For every table completed, pupils received raffle tickets, with bonus tickets awarded for effort and progress. Mr Goddard wrote out a whopping 1,500 raffle tickets after pupils correctly answered over 62,000 times table questions over the past three weeks.

This super achievement was recognised with a prize draw today. Congratulations to Christopher (Year 3), Harry E (Year 4), Woody (Year 5) and Lilou (Year 6) for their wins. They each go home with a bundle of goodies including a maths set, erasers, a toy shark and rubiks cube puzzle.

Whilst this competition was lots of fun, it helped with the more serious tasks of promoting maths fluency and engagement and creating a love of the subject. Mr Goddard remarked, “While not everyone can have a prize, every pupil has done brilliantly. Keep practising because the more you practise, the easier it will be to apply this knowledge to trickier maths problems in the future.”

Alongside the TTRS winners, four other “mathletes” were recognised for their achievements. Well done to Ayden, Jensen, Oliver M and George B who achieved the highest scores in the National Inter-School Maths Quiz Championships selection quiz. Done online, this fiendishly tricky maths test gives pupils just 30 seconds to solve some challenging questions while testing their mental dexterity, accurate question comprehension and speed of calculation.

These four will now go on to represent the school in the National Mathematics Championship; the team is allowed to confer across the 40 multiple choice maths questions covering areas such as mental arithmetic, measurement, time and money, geometry, algebra, logic, number patterns, place and value, fractions, decimals, percentages and statistics.

Well done to the team and best of luck for the next round.