This is the final part (Year 6 / UKS2) of a seven part series detailing what your child should be learning in each year group in primary school. We receive numerous questions from parents wondering what their child should know based on their age or year group. So, we decided to start a blog series detailing some of the core maths curriculum elements for each year group covering Reception – Year 6. Find our earlier blogs for reception here, year 1 here, year 2 here, year 3 here, year 4 here and year 5 here. We also provide you with some useful activities you can be doing at home with your child. This series will try to pull together information from numerous different sources in a concise, easy to understand way.
As always, it’s important to note that teachers are happy to help parents who want to be involved in their child’s education. Your first point of contact if you have any questions, worries or concerns should be the teacher. They will also have a huge amount of resources that they will be more than happy to share with you! One of the most important maths resources you should ask for is the ‘Calculation Policy’ of the school. This will outline and give you a better understanding of the calculation strategies taught in each year group.
Year 6 / UKS2 Maths Curriculum Goals
By Year 6, your child should have a solid understanding of the basic maths skills and be confident with basic maths calculations. Year 6 maths will include new work and revision of earlier topics. These involve but are not limited to multi-step problems and using addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in various forms. In Year 6, the difficulty of some topics will continue to increase specifically fractions, decimals, mental arithmetic, and geometry. They will also be sitting the ‘dreaded’ SATs exams and preparing for secondary school. It really varies as to what level of focus their school places on them during the year but many children can find them daunting. If you are worried about your child’s progress or notice them becoming anxious about their exams, we encourage parents to seek help from the teacher or look into subject specific tutors.
Statistics
- Interpreting and constructing pie charts and line graphs and use these to solve problems
- Calculating and interpreting the mean as an average
- Completing and interpreting information in tables, including timetables
Geometry
- Finding angles around a point, on a straight line and within a right angle
- Drawing a 2D shape using given dimensions and angles
- Identifying angles where they meet at a point, are on a straight line or are vertically opposite
- Drawing and measuring angles and identifying lines of symmetry
- Drawing and translating simple shapes on the coordinate plane and reflecting them in the axes
- Illustrating and naming parts of circles, including radius, diameter and circumference
Measuring
- Converting between units of measurement, using decimal notation up to three decimal places
- Working out the volume of cubes and cuboids
- Telling and writing the time using the 12 and 24 hr clock and solving problems involving converting between units of time
- Working out the perimeter / area of shapes
Algebra
- Using simple formulae
- Generating and describing linear number sequences
- Express missing number problems algebraically
- Find pairs of numbers that satisfy an equation with two unknowns
Ratio and propotion
- Solving problems involving shapes and scale factors
- Finding percentages of amounts
Fractions, decimals and percentages
- Simplifying fractions
- Comparing and ordering fractions
- Adding and subtracting fractions with different denominators
- Multiplying pairs of proper fractions, giving the answer in its simplest form
- Dividing proper fractions by whole numbers
- Multiplying and dividing numbers by 10, 100 and 1000
- Multiplying one-digit numbers with up to two decimal places by whole numbers
- Using written division methods in cases where the answer has up to two decimal places
Calculating
- Multiplying four-digit numbers by two-digit numbers using long multiplication
- Dividing four-digit numbers by two-digit numbers using long division
- Identifying common factors, common multiples and prime numbers
- Solving multi-step problems involving all four operations
- Reading, writing, ordering and comparing numbers to 10,000,000
- Calculating intervals across zero
Home activities:
Continue to try to link your child’s maths activities to real-life practical tasks involving maths. If your child has a watch, encourage them to wear it and get in the habit of looking at the time.
Keep practicing times tables – automatic recall really does help at school and with homework. Practice in the car or on the way to school, set your child a challenge etc.
Continue to create opportunities for your child to handle money and work within a budget. If your child has weekly pocket money, encourage them to save and work out how much they will have in two, three or four weeks.
Practicing with past SATs papers is one of the best ways to identify gaps in your child’s knowledge. It also helps your child familiarise themselves with the experience of taking a test, specifically time limits, exam formats and protocols.
Resources:
The schoolrun.com is a great source for other information and they also have great free resources for checking Year 6 maths progress here.
They also have guidance on how to use SATs past papers to aid with revision here.
Some really fun and interactive games for year 6 pupils and best of all they are free!
If you are a parent of a Year 6 / UKS2 child and need some advice or you are worried about your child’s current progress, feel free to reach out to us at Primary Tutor Project! This is the final part of this series- we hope you found it helpful! If there is any topic in particular you require advice for contact us here.
