Year 1 Expectations

[BigEaredBob]

My daughter has just gone into year 1 and we had parents Evening last night.

She is not a genius but is quite bright and confident reading and writing numbers to 100 and can add numbers beyond 10.

In her maths book one of the tasks was to compare numbers and all the numbers were below 10. There were no numbers above 10 in the book.

I didn’t say anything but the teacher brought it up and said that she could probably do numbers above 10 but the way they teach in the school is to only use numbers up to 10 at this stage. They then challenge by asking the children to explain, for example, why an answer is wrong.

Does this sound ok? My daughter loves school but did say the maths is very easy. I’m not going to do anything about it but was just curious as to whether this is the policy in all schools now or just this one?

[MinPinPuzzz]

From what I know, it sounds quite typical. A lot of what they seem to be learning in my DS’ class is how to all sit and complete an activity independently after a very play based year in EYFS.

[blessedmum2x]

In my DD's school they did number bonds up to 10 when in Reception. In year 1, they were doing number bonds up to 20. She is now in year 2.

[Penhaligon]

It sounds as though they are following the White Rose maths scheme where the focus in the first part of the Autumn term is numbers to 10. This then moves to 20, 50 and then 100 over the course of the year. As the teacher said, children who are 'fluent' in those numbers/concepts will then be challenged with reasoning tasks which will be problem solving based activities that encourage children to explain their thinking and understanding of concepts.

[UserName31456789]

I've found that in primary school they do keep maths in school very very easy for a few years and focus on literacy. Having said that numbers below 10 does sound unusually easy, when my eldest was doing , = in Y1 he at least had numbers in the 100s, or had sums so for example 24+12 and 14+15 (so you'd have to say which was greater, equal or smaller).

[user789653241]

Have a look at this. Actual mastery is not very hard, but getting mastery with greater depth is a bit more complex, even for addition within 10.

www.ncetm.org.uk/public/files/23305594/Mastery_Assessment_Y1_Low_Res.pdf

[BigEaredBob]

Thank you everyone! Yes Penhaigon that sounds like exactly what the teacher was describing 😊

[TheSteakBakeOfAwesome]

Sounds exactly like the first white rose unit of the year. Don't worry - the numbers get bigger later on in the year (I've got one just started Y1, the other just finished it and I was in class for most of the maths lessons last year so I've seen the progression). It's really getting the idea of more/less solid and them being able to explain what they're saying before building on that.

If it helps - later on in the year as far as I recall DD1 was doing things like 15+3 > 10-3 and fairly complex sets of reasoning about it. (I'm going off memory there and have a migraine so might not be exactly correct before the pedants come along)

DD2's just concluded maths is all about learning about crocodiles... I think they overdid the "crocodile eats the biggest number" analogy with her.

[BigEaredBob]

Thank you 😊. It’s all so different to when we were at school isn’t it!

[cariadlet]

Maths has change a huge amount in primary schools just in the last couple of years. Google "maths mastery" , "White Rose maths", "ncetm" or "Shanghai maths" if you want to find out more.

The emphasis is on developing fluency (instant recall of facts such as number bonds and times tables) and developing problem solving and reasoning skills rather than pushing children on to working with bigger numbers.

Even children who are very able with maths often find it really tricky to explain how they know something or how they worked something out.