The name Modern pentathlon comes from the Greek ‘penta’ which means 5. (Hence a pentagon has 5 sides). The original Greek pentathlon consisted on a race, wrestling, long jump, javelin and discuss, but Baron Pierre de Coubertin created a new set of events to reflect the soldiers duties in the 19th century. He stated that a cavalry soldier should be able to:
1. ride an unfamiliar horse
2. fight with a pistol
3. fight with a sword
4. swim
5. run.
Hence the new event was introduced, consisting of shooting, fencing, swimming, equestrian and running.
This worksheet looks at the Women’s results in Beijing, where Heather Fell did really well to win a medal. The total scores need to be added and the top 5 put in order.
Here is a set of pages which at first glance may appear very easy, but in fact can be quite tricky. A 3-digit addition sum has been set out using the standard written method and the answer is also given. But, there are two digits missing and the task is to find the missing digits.
This is harder than it looks because on each sum there is an adjustment where tens or hundreds are ‘carried forward’.
These pages should only be given to children who have had plenty of practice using the standard, or efficient, method of written addition. if children complete them correctly it will show that they have a good understanding of the process.
This set of worksheets can be found in the Year 5 Addition category.
We are well into the year now and mental arithmetic skills should be improving rapidly.
For year 4 we have another set of addition and subtraction questions, but they are quite tough. The first two questions involve adding up four single digit numbers. If only hearing the numbers out loud it is probably best to do this in the order they are heard. If seeing the sheet it is sometimes easier to look for pairs that make 10 or 20and do this part first.
The year 5 questions include percentages, decimals and fractions. two of the questions look at converting percentages into fractions. it is important that children are shown that 50% means 50 out of 100 and that it can also be written as a fraction 50/100. All fractions can be thought of in this way eg 4/5 can be thought of as 4 out of 5.
The year 6 questions further test addition and subtraction skills, this time using large numbers and decimals. They are quite challenging, even for adults.
There will be ten Gold medals to compete for at the London Olympics Track Cycling, 5 for men and 5 for women. The track events will take place at the brand new Velodrome, built especially for the Olympics and should prove to be an exciting few days.
The maths worksheet looks at the results from the 2008 Beijing Olympics where Great Britain excelled, winning a total of 8 Gold medals in Track and Road Cycling. The chart will need to be completed, which is followed by a set of questions about the results. Following this is a graph of the total number of medals won.
Here we have the second set of pages about making number stories, this time linked to subtraction.
It is a good idea to read the subtraction number sentence out loud and discuss what kind of story could be written. Say out loud one or two before writing down a sentence. Whilst they should be kept short there is plenty of opportunity for imagination. For those children who get completely stuck there are some simple words and pictures to help them on their way.
Writing these sentences can encourage the use of the important vocabulary such as subtraction, take away and less than and put the abstract numbers and signs into a real context.
Later the number story can be read out loud and the subtraction rewritten using numbers and signs.
This week’s mental arithmetic questions for years 4, 5 and 6 are now up and running! These pages can be used in lots of different ways, both with individual children or whole classes. If only reading the questions out make sure that they are repeated at least twice. The numbers could be written on a whiteboard, or the child could be given the whole sheet, although in the KS2 SAT mental arithmetic test they will have to listen!
The year 4 questions concentrate on addition and subtraction, with a few other bits and pieces. Lot’s of skills are needed to answer these. For example, subtract 19 from 124 can be done in several ways, but probably the most efficient is to take 20 from 124, leaving 104 and then adding 1 to make 105.
Decimals and fractions form the basis of the year 5 questions. Tricky questions such as ‘Find two fifths of 100′ require two steps:
Step 1: find one fifth of 100 by dividing 100 by 5, which is 20.
Step 2: double 20, which is 40.
There are also questions on converting simple fractions such as a quarter into decimals. These conversions need to be learned ‘off by heart’.
The year 6 questions also concentrate on decimals and fractions, including equivalent fractions.
The Finn was designed in 1949 for the 1952 Olympics and has been used ever since. It is the most physically demanding of all the dinghy classes.
In the Olympics usually each sailor races ten times, but this can depend on weather conditions: no wind, no sailing!
Points are given based on finishing position in each race: 1 point for first, 2 for second, 3 for third and so on.
After 10 races the points are added up and one score is discarded – the highest. This leaves a total from the nine best scores. The lower, the better!
There is then one last race for the top ten where points are doubled (2 for first, 4 for second and so on). These points are added to the nine previous scores to make the total. The sailor with the lowest score is the winner.
The Finn sailing race at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing was a huge success for the Great Britain competitor, Ben Ainslie as cab be seen by the results table on the worksheet.
The results of the top eight in the Beijing Olympics are shown, but they are in random order and they have not had their scores totalled up. There were only 8 races before the final because there was not enough wind to complete two of the races!
For each sailor you need to:
1. Cross off his worst (highest) score from the first 8 races.
2. Add up each total.
3. Put their finishing positions on the right hand side.
It’s always a good idea to have plenty of worksheets and activities to help children to work with money and we have just published another set of great pages on money, suitable for year 3 children. To make these easier to find we have created a new category in the Year 3 section just for money.
These worksheets help the progression made in year 2 and the first sets of questions look at counting up in steps of 10p as well as adding 10p to amounts. This is quite easy when the hundreds boundary is not crossed, but children do find it harder to count on crossing over the hundreds. e.g. count on 10p from £1.95. There are similar sheets for subtracting 10p.
Another set of pages looks at ordering amounts of money, including where the amounts have been written as pounds or in pence. This is part of the very important process of being able to write pence as pounds and vice versa. It is essential to show that when writing money in pounds there should always be two digits after the decimal point e.g. 260p is £2.60, not £2.6.
Finding change from £2 can often be done by counting on and we have a great set of worksheets to help with this. It’s a good idea to encourage children to speak out loud when adding on. For example finding the change from £2 when spending 65p can be worked out by saying:
‘add 5 to make 70p, add 30 to make 100p and add another pound to make £2’. That’s one pound 35p.’
Partitioning numbers is a phrase which many parents may not be familiar with but is being used increasingly in schools. Simply it is a process to help with mental and written calculations which involves splitting the number.
At first children will partition 2-digit numbers into tens and units:
eg 56 = 50 + 6.
This can be developed further :
eg 56 = 40 + 16 or 30 + 26.
Both addition and subtraction can be done using this technique.
As children become familiar with 3-digit numbers they can also partition these into hundreds, tens and units in several different ways. This set of worksheets gives plenty of practice at partitioning 3-digit numbers.
This week we have published the first of our sets of worksheets aimed at helping children raise their SAT levels from a 4 to a 5. As such, some of the questions are quite tricky. We begin by looking at measurement of length, perimeter and area.
A good knowledge of the metric system of measuring length is needed to succeed with this section, including converting millimetres to centimetres and centimetres to metres. Children may well be asked to compare measurements written in mm, cm or m.
One of the best techniques to use with these comparisons is to convert all the measurements to centimetres and then compare – but don’t forget to convert back to the originals when writing in the answers!
Perimeter questions assume knowledge of properties of shapes e.g. an isosceles triangle has two sides of equal length, an equilateral triangle has 3 equal sides of equal length and a regular polygon has all its sides of equal length.
Popular questions also involve working out perimeters, but firstly having to work out lengths of sides from the given information. Many children find these two and three part operations to get an answer very tricky and need plenty of experience of how to attack them.
A further complication is that it is often stated that the drawings are not to scale – a clear warning not to try and work the answer out by using a ruler!
Area questions are seldom straightforward. A popular type is to have two rectangles together forming a third shape. Again, length of sides has to be worked out before the area can be calculated.
