How do you teach number bonds?

[crazygracieuk]

Today is the last day of school. When we got home I had a look in my y1 spn's bag and he has homework. It asks me to practice number bonds to 20 as he's being tested on them when he gets back. I have no idea how to teach them or how the teacher will ask the question.

I'm pretty sure that he doesn't know them and not sure how he's supposed to work them out.

Yes schools really should issue jargon busting sheets to parents on a regular basis, bit like the acronyms crib sheet on this site.

Took me ages to realise that FKS meant 'Reception' when the school newsletter referred to it, I probably missed a few things for that reason.

we did it with a magnetic board (don't know where it came from) and made a 'fence' of magnets down the middle, with a gap in the centre.

We put 20 (or you could do 10) marbles on the board, and counted how many 'sheep' were in one field, and how many left in the other...then as sheep walked through the gate, we counted again.

It was time consuming and not as good as the SONG (genius!) but it helped explain that there were always the same in total, they were just in different places.

I would say also, 'what's 5 and 5? What's 6 and 4?' and ds would know that the answer was always 10, so he always got it right I would just vary the question. Repeat ad infinitum.

Yep repetition is the way to go.. we used tiddlywinks counters and a square made of sticks - if this many are inside, how many are outside etc.... Then we started writing them like at school (number) + (empty box) = 20 and it all made sense.

I usually teach it with mini chocolate buttons and two paper plates the children count out ten or twenty buttons and find all the possible ways to split them onto the two plates recording their answers as addition.

Great idea bobbinrobbin they should even have that on all the NC sites for the most commonly used jargon for easy reference!

Exoticfruits - I do agree that number bonds is a catchier 'handle' but not that it should necessarily be the parents responsibility to find out what all the jargon is. Some parents haven't necessarily got the time, (and unfortunately others may not have the inclination). Any help schools/dfe/ofsted or whoever can give parents would be of real benefit.

There are some courses offered by my county to help parents keep up with the new methods. Some run for 4weeks,some 6. Think they are called 'Keeping Up with the Children'. I haven't been able to attend,but I am told they help loads.

Don't know if other counties offer similar?

Sadly, a lot of parents are not familiar with the terminologies/methods used now. I used to think I didn't know how to support my children,because I didn't grow up in England, but my British friends are equally 'lost'.

I've run similar courses in my school but find many parents will turn up for reading/writing but are "afraid" of anything maths related and few actually attend.
these might help with maths jargon

www.emaths.co.uk/documents/glossary.pdf
www.amathsdictionaryforkids.com/dictionary.html

I really had to think about FKS and I taught reception 20+ years and have never heard it called that

Yep, round table, they do that here too. I've been to a couple of maths courses & they were very good, but they were in school time so working parents wounldnt have been able to attend. I actually quite enjoy learning about learning (I'm a psychology grad,) so find al this stuff fascinating, but it can be quite time consuming. From what I've seen the way numeracy & reading is taught in my dcs school is way better than the way it was taught to me. Learning number bonds for instance makes a lot of sense.

I do it with sheep....! Well we are a rural market town... Two pens made with fences from an old farm set and 10 or 20 laminated sheep. Even better with small toy sheep but I've only got 10 of these. All the sheep must be in the pens or they get eaten by the wolf. They always start off by randomly finding pairs and it's a great way to introduce the idea of systematic thinking (don't use that exact word obviously), and starting with one sheep in one pen and all the others in the other pen. We capture their ideas as sums and go on at a later stage to looking at moving one sheep between the pens and looking at what it does to the numbers and Finding and recognising patterns. Lots of stuff you can do but at that age whatever you do must be based on a practical approach. Agree with the snap cards for practice once bonds have been identified.
Have fun!