1. Counting

Making progress with counting will still be important in year 3, using up to three digit numbers. Grouping into tens or fives and using tally charts are both effective ways of counting larger sets of objects.

In Year 3 work on counting in tens will cross the hundreds boundary (eg count on from 285:  295, 305 etc).  This is harder than we might think and requires a good understanding of counting. A lot of oral work is necessary if children are to become confident with this and it will help a great deal with mental arithmetic if children can count up and down in tens from any starting point.
Having counted from one number to another it is a good idea to ask how many tens they have counted.

Counting on and back will progress to larger numbers. Starting with any small number, it is expected that children will be able to count on in steps of 2, 3, 4, 5, as well as 10.

Counting on and back in whole hundreds, up to 1 000, is also introduced in year 3.

Simple sequences, or patterns of numbers, which go up or down in equal steps should be recognised and children should continue to try to say what the rule is when they recognise a sequence.

They should also begin to make up their own sequences of numbers, given certain conditions eg ‘make a sequence that has a 4 and a 12 in it’ or ‘make a sequence which goes up in twos’.

Work will continue with multiples, extending to multiples of 50 and 100.

2. As well as reading and writing numbers up to 1 000 children are also expected to understand what any digit in a three digit number represents.

3. Comparing and ordering numbers

Children are expected to be more confident in  their knowledge and use of the vocabulary which is used when comparing and ordering numbers.

4. Rapid mental response

Rapid mental response to questions involving the addition and subtraction of 1,  10  and 100 is expected by the end of year 3. Building on earlier work questions will now involve crossing the hundreds boundary.

e.g. what is one less than 400?

5. Estimating and rounding

In year three children will continue to make estimates of numbers and measurements, usually up to about 100. This could involve the number of marbles in a jar, counters in a pile, lines on a page, words in a paragraph etc and a great deal of practice at estimating can be done in the outside environment.

6. Understanding Fractions

In year 3 children will be introduced to the fraction 1/10 (one tenth), as well as fractions such as 1/3 (one third) and 3/4 (three quarters), where the numerator (top number) is more than one.

Get more information on Year 3 Counting and Number

An abacus is an excellent way to help children realise the importance of place value. This week we have published two sets of year 2 maths worksheets on the abacus. The first asks children to read the numbers from the abacus and the second asks for an abacus to be drawn. All numbers are 3-digit, or hundreds, tens and units, which most year 2 children will not have had a lot of experience with.

A key point to understanding this is the zero which acts as a place ‘holder’. For example, in the number 405 if the zero was missing it would be read as 45!

Go to the first of our hundreds, tens and units abacus worksheets

Plenty of practice here at counting on in fives, right up to 100. As confidence grows children should recognise the patterns involved with counting in fives. The units digit is always a five or zero. They alternate, also making odd and even numbers.

Don’t mistake the ability to count up in fives with knowing the 5 times table. In this case it is the pattern which is important (later leading to rules of divisibility), but children should not need to count up in fives to work out 6 times 5.

Go to our ‘Counting on in fives’ pages.

Trying to count a large number of objects can be quite daunting and it is very easy to miscount or forget where you have got to. One solution is to simplify the task by grouping objects into tens. if this is a physical exercise they can be moved into separate areas but if counting objects on paper it is better to ring them or mark each item with a colour (different colour for each group of 10.

Make sure your children are confident with counting up in tens before trying these pages. These pages can be found in our Year 2 maths, under Counting and Number.

Go to our Grouping into tens worksheets

Here we have another set of pages to help with counting on in tens from a 2-digit numbers. A little care needs to be taken with these as the question asks,

“How many tens did you count?”

So, when counting in tens from 23 to 43 the answer is 2 (tens), not twenty.

Many children (and adults) count out loud and use their fingers to work out the answer to this type of question, holding out one finger each time ten more is added. Nothing wrong with this but care needs to be taken that ten is not counted when saying the first number out loud.

Go to the More Counting on in Tens worksheets

Here is another of our suggestions for practical activities that you can do with your children at home. Like most it is a fairly obvious, but very helpful activity, but not necessarily one that you would think of doing.

Learning to count is usually a very visual activity, but it is also a good idea to include some listening activities as well.

All you need is a collection of coins and a tin or container which will make a nice ‘clincky’ sound when a coin is dropped into it. (Make sure it has no sharp edges and won’t break!)

Say that you are going to drop some coins into the tin and ask your child to shut their eyes and by listening carefully, count the number of coins.

Practical ideas: Coins in the tin

One of the reasons that we are able to count a number of objects quickly is that we recognise the pattern. Dice patterns are an obvious example of this – we recognise the pattern of four dots in a square with the fifth in the middle as 5 without actually counting them.

Children starting maths do not have this recognition and it is a god idea to ask them to arrange numbers of shapes into patterns. These three pages do this with the numbers from 3 to 10.

Patterns in numbers

Lego bricks, multilink, similar building blocks or just cubes are an excellent resource for helping with counting. Here are just two ideas for building towers, including counting up in ones as it is built, and down in ones as it is taken apart.

Build two towers and comparing the number of bricks leads to more counting, addition and subtraction.

This resource and other similar ones can be found in our Further Resources: Practical Ideas section.

Building towers

Here are four great maths worksheets for those children who are confident with counting in ones and are ready to move on to counting up in tens from a teen number and then any 2-digit number.
Whilst the four pages concentrate on the same skill, they are all very different.
Don’t be surprised if your child uses fingers to help them with this. For example, counting on 3 tens from 21, many children will start at 21, hold one finger up for 31, 2 for 41 etc.

Go to our Worksheets on Counting On in Tens

Glove puppets are really popular in reception classes as a way of engaging children’s attention and there are many maths activities that they can be used for.This activity involves the glove puppet making mistakes in counting and the children have to correct the mistakes. Children are more than happy to go along with this and it makes counting, addition and subtraction much more fun.

This, and other fun, practical ideas can be found in our Further Resources: practical ideas section.

Glove puppets for counting