Maths Week
Maths is my favourite subject to teach so Maths week is probably one of my favourite weeks of the school year. This year it runs from 10th – 18th of October. For more information visit the Maths Week website where you will find a range of competitions and activities that you and your class can take part in.
Maths Week Website
Visit the Maths Week website here.
Some of my favourite things to take part in are Mangahigh, Target Boards and Maths Eyes. Even if you don’t get a chance to use everything on the website during the week, I always download it and use it throughout the year. Everything is free to download too!
Whole school activities
Maths Eyes competition
Get the children to take a photograph and write a maths question (I’m going to give this for homework during the week).
Get the children to draw something or create a problem based on the school environment.
Year Group Quiz
The children can work in small groups to compete in a quiz in their classrooms. We usually do this by sending a group to each classroom but unfortunately that won’t be possible this year so it could be an option to do the quiz on Zoom or Microsoft Teams etc. (We’ve done this a few times in my school this year and it’s worked really well. I use my visualiser as a camera on the class, a webcam would also work well so the children can see the other classes too.)
Maths Trails
Older classes could create Maths trails for younger classes to complete or they could be teacher designed for the class to complete too.
Maths Riddles (over the intercom)
There are some fantastic riddles on Nrich which would be perfect. The children could be given time every day to use their problem solving skills and work collaboratively to figure out the riddles.
Maths Trails
These are a brilliant way to get the children to see Maths all around them.
School yard
- Lines and Angles: Find a pair of parallel lines on the yard, find a perpendicular line, find an acute angle.
- If a bin costs 87.56. How much would 8 cost?
- If a basketball net costs €123.89. How much did the basketball nets cost?
- Find something that is approximately 1m/ greater than a 1m/ less than a metre.
School car park
- How many cars are in the car park?
- What fraction of the cars are silver?
- What is the oldest car?
- Note down some of the license plates – put them in order starting with the oldest (by year) and then by the number at the end of the license plate.
- How many cars were registered in the county and how many were registered in another county? (Fractions/Decimals/Percentages could be used here)
School building
- Directions to different classrooms/areas of the school.
- Angles/Lines within the classroom (look at the door – make an acute angle/right angle etc.)
- Shapes – how many 2d/3d shapes can you see in the classroom?
- Cost of items throughout the school building
- Measure the area of the classroom/hall etc.
- Measure the length from one room to another
Integration
There are so many opportunities for integration throughout Maths week.
Art
Music
- How many beats in a bar?
- What note is missing (4/4 time)
- Value of notes


P.E.
Length
- Measure the distance you can run in 1 minute
- Measure the distance you can throw a range of objects e.g. quoit, tennis ball, basketball etc.
Addition/Subtraction
- Give the children a target of running as many laps of the yard as they can in 5/10 minutes. Add up the total number of laps.
- Throwing and catching – give different values depending on distance. Add up your total score (throwing bean bags)
Data
- Create graphs to show the distance run by members in your group/ how far you could throw each object etc.
History
Timeline – put historical events in order
Famous mathematicians