THAT’S MATHEMATICS!
We love Maths at Warminster Prep and this half term there have been lots of opportunities for us to celebrate our enjoyment, develop our skills beyond the classroom and recognise its importance as a skill for life.
The start of term was the eagerly anticipated launch of Mathletics across the school. We welcomed Lee Harrison from 3P learning to lead a special assembly to introduce Reception-Year 6 to the exciting online platform: Mathletics. Mathletics is designed to provide students with a captivating and safe learning experience. It combines targeted and adaptive curriculum content, structured and interactive support, with engaging gaming and rewards – all aligned to the requirements of the UK’s key primary maths curricula.
Since its launch on April 17th our pupils have clocked up a massive 579 hours 44 minutes spent completing curriculum activities and Live Mathletics. Year Five are currently the most committed class, between them they have contributed 143 hours 10 minutes to that total, accruing 95,783 Mathletics points. Lucy Cooper, in Year 3 has scored the most individual points 24,163 (although I am sure it will be more by the time you read this). I am delighted with the enthusiastic reception to this new initiative and look forward to finding out which house will win the inaugural House Mathletics Trophy at the end of this term.
The first ever National Numeracy Day took place on Wednesday 16th May – an annual celebration of the importance of numbers in everyday life with the aim of bringing together individuals, employers, educators and influencers to improve numeracy. We were thrilled to add it to our calendar and celebrate the importance of Maths by recognising Maths all around us. We began the day with a lively assembly finding the Maths in everything we do every day. We explored the importance of Maths in every subject and enjoyed a mathematical, musical warm up with Mrs Collishaw. We realised we had all done a great deal of Maths by 9:15am and found out a little about famous people who had achieved great things through their use of Mathematics. These included Florence Nightingale, Isaac Newton and Alan Turing. We identified that Maths is everywhere and came to the conclusion that there is no job where Maths skills are unnecessary. This was followed up by Maths activities with our buddies from other classes. The opportunity to recognise the many Maths skills involved in baking chocolate chip cookies was not missed by Mrs Cross and this was a real hit with Reception and their Year 6 buddies.
So, remember we are all Numbers People and if you need reminding why, nobody puts it better than Tom Lehrer, in the lyrics to his song: That’s Mathematics. (We listened to it in assembly – You can find it on YouTube!)
Rebecca Glenny, Head of Prep Maths