Number Operations & Calculation Methods
This collection of resources supports the teaching of number operations and calculation methods in secondary mathematics.
Here are some favourite activities selected by the NRICH team.
- Have You Got It? Can you explain the strategy for winning this game with any target?
- Cryptarithms Can you crack these cryptarithms?
- Keep it Simple Can all unit fractions be written as the sum of two unit fractions?
- What numbers can we make? Imagine we have four bags containing a large number of 1s, 4s, 7s and 10s. What numbers can we make?
- Up, Down, Flying Around Play this game to learn about adding and subtracting positive and negative numbers.
- Playing Connect Three In this game the winner is the first to complete a row of three. Are some squares easier to land on than others?
These are just a few of the activities on Number Operations and Calculation Methods that you can find on the NRICH curriculum pages.
The activities below, taken from the STEM Learning website, complement the NRICH activities above.
Positive and Negative Numbers - Brick Walls
This Excel file deals with the four operations on positive and negative numbers.
Most of the interactive sheets show number walls where operations are carried out on either positive or a mixture of positive and negative numbers. The contents of cells can be revealed in various orders so that inverse operations can be explored.
Directed Numbers
This resource contains eleven SMILE cards dealing with directed numbers. Particularly relevant are the following.
Boxes (pdf page 4) is a game for two players who keep a running total of their directed numbers trying to make the bigger total.
Snakes and Adders (pdf page 5) is a board game for two players. The scores on three dice are combined by adding or subtracting then the value of the appropriate number is covered on a grid. The winner is the player who covers more numbers.
Challengers A
This resource by Nuffield Maths contains a variety of puzzles. A selection of the number puzzles is shown below.
Letter Codes (pdf page 29) is a set of puzzles where digits have been replaced by letters.
Numbers 1 (pdf page 3) shows a set of questions involving finding missing numbers mostly by addition or subtraction.
Numbers 2 (pdf page 5) is a worksheet of questions all involving the word “consecutive”.
Numbers 3 (pdf page 10) is a set of four puzzles which can be solved using addition and subtraction.
Darts 1-3 (pdf pages 23-25) are sets of questions based upon a standard dart board where students need to use the four rules of number.
