Competition pack

Run your own Maths Week Make Maths Fun with Mathletics powered by

Running a maths week is a great way to get the whole school involved in fun maths themed activities. Using Mathletics alongside other maths-themed activities can help you get everyone really excited about working with numbers!

Getting Started

When should we run the event?

Make Each Day Count

Rewards and Celebration

Plan your event for a time when the whole school can take part, the more children and teachers who participate in the event the more exciting it will be. You may need to arrange the timetable for your week around access to ICT facilities. If you have a lot of computers then you may be able to use the same timetable for the whole school but if you only have enough for one class then you will need to operate a rotation system for the parts of the week that involve Mathletics.

It is easiest to track Mathletics results if you run your event from Monday to Friday (or Sunday if you want to include a home-based element) because this corresponds to the Mathletics week. This means that teachers and pupils will easily be able to track progress, review their results and celebrate their achievements.

Choose a topic to focus on each day. Build on each day to culminate in one end of week maths extravaganza day where the whole school focuses on answering as many Live Mathletics and Curriculum questions as possible. For the other days, incorporate Mathletics learning and teaching tools into cross-curricular activities, including real-life examples, physical games and art and design to appeal to all types of learners. You know what works best, and what doesn’t work to motivate your class. Whether they respond well to competition or creativity let your imagination run wild! Try some of the following activities to get the whole school having fun with maths.

As well as challenging your students to win a place on our online daily leader board, why not design your own in class, which you can update each day. Each student could draw a picture of their own Mathlete to represent them, with prizes for the best display.

Run your own Maths Week Make Maths Fun with Mathletics powered by

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Roving Reporters!

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Have Your Cake and Eat It!

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Get into Character!

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International Mental Maths!

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Let’s Get Physical!

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Tall and Mighty!

Why not appoint a group of children in the school to report on all the fun activities you have planned, culminating in a newsletter and a piece for the Mathletics blog. You could also appoint an official photographer for the week, to capture the action as it happens.

Why not cook some maths themed food! Explore the concept of fractions with pizza or slices of cake, practise estimation with the number of sweets in a jar, and subtraction as you gobble it all up! Support this with the Mathletics curriculum activities on fractions, ratios and division.

Have a non-uniform day at school - dress as maths symbols, mathematicians or Mathletes. Award prizes for the wackiest costumes and send us some pictures for the Mathletics blog! Replicate some of the Mathletics activities in a game show setting; try quick-fire maths questions Live Mathletics style and set up some practical problem solving - think Fort Boyard or the Crystal Maze.

Use a map to mark each country your class plays against during the Live Mathletics games. Use this as inspiration to explore different time zones and to learn the flags of each nation. You could even design your own school flag for the occasion. Try simple maths in different languages, are there any children who can teach you numbers in a language other than English?

Get active with maths, and work off that cake! Work with a life-size number line in the classroom or playground; jump forwards and backwards to investigate addition and subtraction. Limber up your mind with a few fast paced games of Live Mathletics to keep the competitive spark alive.

Estimate the collective height and weight of the class then use a range of measuring techniques to check the responses. Award prizes for the closest guesses. Try some length and weight conversion activities in Mathletics. Who can run fastest? Jump furthest? Who has the longest arms? Make a variety of different graphs of your class’ results. Use data eBooks in Mathletics to investigate different ways of displaying the information.

Run your own Maths Week Make Maths Fun with Mathletics powered by

How do I include a Mathletics challenge?

Arrange for every class to have an hour online (this doesn’t have to be continuous, you might prefer a series of short blocks. You can also allow more time if your facilities allow). It can create a real buzz to mix classes, pitch classes against each other or play teachers versus pupils!

Both Live Mathletics and Curriculum points will count towards your pupils’ score during the week. Encourage them to spend plenty of time on curriculum activities by setting tasks through your Teacher Centre. • Pupils earn one point per correct answer on Live Mathletics and ten points per correct curriculum question answered. • Give prizes to the classes or pupils who have improved the most during the week. Improvement can be tracked by the number of credits earned. These disappear as pupils spend them on their Mathlete so use a class or individual tracking system to log these. The highest number of credits represents the most improved pupil.

How can I track pupil progress?

• Sign into your Admin Centre using your school username and password (you can obtain this by contacting [email protected].) • Click into School Usage and enter an appropriate date range • Click on each class to see a class score and individual breakdown You can review your own class data through Results in the Teacher Centre.

Encourage your students to attempt each activity three times. Our studies have shown that typically three attempts lead to mastery of a concept. You can also use the Results area of your Teacher Centre to review the number of attempts each student has made.

How can pupils review progress?

Your students can track their progress through their Student Centre. Their weekly points will be reset to zero on Sunday evening, but they are all safely stored in your Teacher Centre for you to reward pupils for their efforts. Credits for improvement will accumulate during the week and can be viewed in the Mathlete shop.

Run your own Maths Week Make Maths Fun with Mathletics powered by

When you get to the end of the week celebrate the school’s achievements with a bang, we believe in any excuse to have a party! Here are some suggestions you might like to try, or take advantage of the imaginations of your pupils, we’re sure they’ll have plenty to say! If you have an internal awards system, such as house points, this can also be a valuable way to reward achievement.

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Create a podium in the playground (or school hall if it’s a rainy day!) and make it big enough for a whole class to stand on. Have an awards ceremony with trophies, medals and bunches of flowers for the winners. This is a good way to celebrate a range of achievements, here are some ideas: • The most improved class within the school • The most improved individual in the school/class • The class/individual with the most points • The class who played against the highest number of countries • The best Mathlete drawing in school/class • The class/year group with the best designed leader board • The best fancy dress costume in school/class

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Invite the local press to come and interview some of your winning pupils, this could be a particularly interesting story if you turn the maths week into a fundraising opportunity for your preferred charity. You could do this by sponsoring children to earn a certain number of points on Mathletics, or to complete a collection of maths problems within a fixed time period.

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Hold a street party or school fair and invite the parents to come and see the displays and hear stories about all the fun activities that have taken place. Hold a head to head competition using Live Mathletics to get the parents involved in practising their own maths skills.

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Create a Wall of Fame in your school hall. Children can contribute to this by writing accounts of the week and describing their personal successes. Include a mood board where children can highlight areas of maths they now feel confident in. Award each child a participation certificate to take home, including a letter to their parents congratulating them on their child’s achievements. Significant contributions can be recognised by special certificates such as a Headteacher’s award or a Mathlete of the Week nomination.

Run your own Maths Week How do I run a Mathletics Competition? powered by

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Set the dates

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Choose the format

Discuss this with your colleagues, and invite any other schools who may also like to take part.

Decide which format would suit you best:

A 1 Week Competition (Should run from Monday to Sunday). Schedule online Live Mathletics “battles” against opposing teams. Complete activities to earn enough points to get to the top of the Competition Hall of Fame! Awards for Top Class group, Top 3 Students based on points earned and Most Improved Students based on practice.

B 1 Day Competition Schedule online Live Mathletics “battles” throughout the day against opposing teams. Awards for Top Class group, Top 3 Students and participation.

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Prepare

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Compete!

Use our guides to familiarise yourself with the program and introduce it to your students, then set up a time to speak with us for further details about the format of the event. Ensure all your ICT equipment is booked, checked and ready!

Get playing! Use the attached guides to help you track and provide all teams with full competition results and prizes.

Run your own Maths Week How do I reward the students? powered by

The Teacher Centre is a wonderful thing!

You can use the Mathletics Teacher Console to track your students’ progress throughout the competition and identify the winners. Here’s how:

And the winners are… Whether you have chosen to run your competition over a day or a week, here’s how to identify your Top Class, your Top 3 performing students based on points earned, and the Most Improved Students: Identify the Top Class based on points earned: a) From the Teacher Console homepage, click on Reports, then Reports again. b) Select the Participation tab in the table on the left, then select View by Class c) Click on the column header labelled Total Points to apply a points filter Identify the Top 3 performing students based on points earned: a) From the Teacher Console homepage, click on Reports, then Reports again. b) Select the Participation tab in the table on the left, then select View Top Students c) Click on the column header labelled Total Points to apply a points filter If you would like to award a prize to the student who has demonstrated the most improvement over the course of the week, get in touch with the support team who will be able to send you the details right away!

Reward your pupils with Mathletics goodies!

In your Mathletics End of Year Celebration Pack, there is a selection of goodies you can award to your pupils for all their hard work on Mathletics. Wristbands can be awarded to pupils in your Top Class, medals are included for your Top 3 students, and there’s a very special trophy for the most deserving pupil!