Reasoning About Number

Target Activities

General Description

These four pairs of activities are designed to encourage reasoning about number at a variety of levels. Each of the activities shown is the first of a pair of related activities. The second of each pair is a little more demanding.

Because the activities are open-ended they can be used at a variety of levels. However, as a guide:-

Make 10 is aimed at Years 1 and 2
Make 21 is aimed at Years 2 and 3
Make 50 is aimed at Years 4 and 5
Make 100 is aimed at Years 5 and 6

Adapting the activities to different levels

With support each of these activities is accessible for the younger year group shown. Support may be needed to help children to develop a feel for what is likely to work and to encourage them to estimate mentally. Indeed, all three activities will encourage mental methods if they are introduced as such.

To extend each activity, ask children to be systematic in their approach and to ensure they have all possible answers. Clearly, the most able should be asked to justify that they have found all the possible answers.

Make Your Own Target Activities

All eight pages of target activities have been collected onto one file and the target numbers and instructions have been removed. This will let you tailor the activities to suit your own purpose.

There are several ways to make use of these blanks:-

• you could alter the numbers in the main activities a little to give more practice

• use them as activities for homework

• use a variety of target numbers as a means of differentiating the activity

• children could choose their own target numbers

• offer open ended challenges to more able children - for example, what is the highest target which is possible with any particular grid?

To get your set of blank target grids click here.

Each activity requires a set of small number cards. These are available from here