year 2 maths problem solving investigations

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Problem-solving maths investigations for year 2.

Hamilton provide an extensive suite of problem-solving maths investigations for Year 2 to facilitate mathematical confidence, investigative inquiry and the development of maths meta skills in 'low floor – high ceiling' activities for all.

Explore all our in-depth problem solving investigations for Year 2 .

Use problem-solving investigations within every unit to encourage children to develop and exercise their ability to reason mathematically and think creatively.

Investigations provide challenges that offer opportunities for the development of the key mathematical skills while deepening conceptual understanding. They are designed to be accessible in different ways to all children. An added bonus is the substantial amount of extra calculation practice they often incorporate! The problems are designed to help children identify patterns, to explore lines of thinking and to reason and communicate about properties of numbers, shapes and measures.

Hamilton provide a mix of our own specially commissioned investigations, that include guidance for teachers together with a child-friendly sheet to guide your pupils through the investigation, as well as links to investigations on other highly regarded websites.

I am very grateful for Hamilton Trust resources, particularly the maths investigations. Julia, teacher in Wiltshire

You can find Hamilton's investigations for Year 2:

• Individually, they are incorporated into every unit in our Year 2 flexible maths blocks .
• Collectively, they appear on our resources page where you can explore all our in-depth problem solving investigations for Year 2 .

Do read our extensive range of advice for more information about the investigations and for tips on how to use them effectively.

Hamilton’s problem-solving investigations are 'low floor, high ceiling' activities that give all children opportunities to develop mastery and mathematical meta-skills. Explore a set for a whole year group.

Hamilton’s Problem-solving Investigations provide school-wide solutions to the challenges of building investigative skills from Early Years to Year 6.

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Open ended maths investigation - year 2 addition

Subject: Mathematics

Age range: 5-7

Resource type: Other

Last updated

7 August 2021

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I use the activity with my year 2 students but it can easily be adapted to suit other year groups. This resource is a maths investigation to practice addition with regrouping. There are 3 levels of challenge to meet the varying needs of the pupils. You will need a box of small building bricks or lego. I just pick out the pieces I need and put a small amount on each table. A small amount goes a surprisingly long way with this activity as their constructions are quite small. I usually take pictures of the structures so we can talk about the value of each during the plenary.

You might also be interested in: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/3-open-ended-fraction-investigations-12058545

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Open ended maths investigations

Open ended maths investigations are vital for allowing opportunities for pupils to use their developing skills. Included here are investigations for: fractions of number and shapes measurement including length, time and mass addition with regrouping Each investigation is differentiated 3 ways to meet the needs of your classroom and allow for challenge. These are perfect for home learning too.

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Maths Resources & Worksheets > Year 2 Maths Resources & Worksheets >

Investigations Resources and Worksheets

About these resources.

Differentiated maths resources for Summer Block 5 (Investigations) in small steps for KS1 children in Year 2. Each small step contains a pack of resources which include a teaching PowerPoint, a varied fluency worksheet pack (in three differentiated levels) and a reasoning and problem solving worksheet pack (in 3 differentiated levels). Coverage of the Summer Block 5 (Investigations) small steps include coins , abacus, combinations of amounts and pyramids.  These Summer Block 5 (Investigations) resources have been designed with the relevant Year 2 curriculum objectives in mind.

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Coins Investigation Year 2 Maths Investigations Resource Pack

Coins Investigation Year 2 has been designed for you to use during Summer Block 5. It includes a teaching PowerPoint with the investigation prompts and a teacher guide with ideas for concrete resources and question hints.

Abacus Investigation Year 2 Maths Investigations Resource Pack

Abacus Investigation Year 2 has been designed for you to use during Summer Block 5. It includes a teaching PowerPoint with the investigation prompts and a teacher guide with ideas for concrete resources and question hints.

Combinations of Amounts Investigation Year 2 Maths Investigations Resource Pack

Combinations of Amounts Investigation Year 2 has been designed for you to use during Summer Block 5. It includes a teaching PowerPoint with the investigation prompts and a teacher guide with ideas for concrete resources and question hints.

Pyramids Investigation Year 2 Maths Investigations Resource Pack

Pyramids Investigation Year 2 Resource Pack includes two different investigations to use for Summer Block 5. It includes a teaching PowerPoint with the investigation prompts and a teacher guide with ideas for concrete resources and question hints.

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Fun Maths Activities and Investigations for KS1 and KS2 in Primary School

Anantha anilkumar.

Over the years, we’ve created lots of different fun maths activities and investigations to add to primary teachers’ toolboxes. Some of these maths activities mirror our online one to one maths tutoring programme, while others are more suitable for whole class teaching. We share here as part of our continual support for KS1 and KS2 teachers working in UK classrooms.

The purpose of these numeracy activities, especially the event-based ones, is three-fold:

1. To support you, the teacher, with problem solving and reasoning questions (with answers) and save you writing your own. 

2. To give learners the opportunity to see more everyday maths in context, and experiences of how maths reasoning really matters in the real world. 3. To add some variety and relevance to the maths lesson slides, questions and worksheets you may be doing with your class every day. We love what the White Rose maths hub resources provide in terms of weekly planning, but sometimes we may be looking for some more exciting, hands-on and fun maths activities, whether for Year 1 or Year 6.

Topical Maths Activities For The Term

Maths investigations linked to key calendar dates this term, designed to develop reasoning and problem solving in your pupils

Some of you may question the place that fun has in a child’s education , and whether fun maths lessons will achieve the long term goal of retention and retrieval. While we’ve all had a class which requires an upbeat tempo of fun games as part of their learning process, many children will experience cognitive overload if important new maths concepts are introduced through a game. You will know your pupils best in this context. 

The majority of maths activities and investigations shared below use a fun concept or relevant idea to develop children’s number sense, fluency, reasoning and problem solving skills in the pursuit of learning maths.

Follow the links below to find out more about the kind of maths activities and maths investigations we’ve got available to you.

Fun maths activities KS2 (with some KS1 in there too)

Fun outdoor maths activities 13 flexible and fun activities to do outside, many of which can be adapted for early years to Year 6; most of these involve some kind of physical activity and fine motor skill development, as well as treasure hunts for angles, ways to incorporate data handling, graphs and measurement into the school fair, and using mathematical skills to make mathematical connections to nature. 

Fun back to school maths activities teaching ideas to help you get back in the groove of maths lessons after a long summer break. These are summer maths activities the whole class can get involved in, some practising quick mental maths skills, others involving more complex reasoning, plus the odd card game maths activity as well.  

Fun end of term maths activities : We all know that by the end of the summer term the atmosphere in class tends to get a bit overexcitable. Here are some ideas to harness that excitement into some fun and lively maths investigations that recap children’s knowledge from across their year’s work from 2d shapes to averages and algebra.

Fun maths games for kids at home : This might almost be our favourite collection – one to hand out to parents for homework and homeschool; it includes home-made board games, fun ways to practise times tables and lost of fun games that help children with their maths skills and require only a pencil, a piece of paper and a pack of playing cards to get going. Essential for anyone undertaking any kind of home learning with their children. 

We’ve also now extended our maths games collections to include KS1 maths games , KS2 maths games , and even KS3 maths games .

Fun maths lessons for KS2 : a collection of our favourite fun maths lessons, suitable for Year 3 to Year 6 (ideal for after SATs) which include human bar charts, sharing 3D shapes, and planning the teacher’s next holiday! 

Fun maths starters KS2 : 15 of the best maths starters to help you introduce a new topic, consolidate previous work, or just to use as part of a maths meeting with your class, improving their mental maths – includes a printable version to use in school. 

Fun SATs revision games : Even 11-year-olds need a break sometimes, so we asked some fantastic teachers on Twitter what their favourite top tips for keeping SATs revision fun were, and here’s your answer – loads of great ideas in here for anyone teaching Year 6 .  Fun maths club activities : Provided you’re armed with some creative, open ended, and ideally practical maths club activities to give children, maths clubs are not nearly as hard to set up and run as you might first imagine. The benefits are manifold; this article has all you need to get started including several really fun group games specially designed for primary school maths clubs.

Fun maths investigations for topical events

KS2 maths investigations : For many years now, Third Space has been creating maths investigations for Year 6. We’ve now adapted them to be suitable across KS2. In the main, these tend to be open ended maths investigations, focused around key events in the primary school calendar. Some of these are also slightly shorter activities but they all require pupils to do extensive problem solving and reasoning based around events in everyday life. Here are some favourite KS2 maths problems solving investigations from each term:

Here’s our complete list of topical maths investigations for year 5 and year 6.

Autumn Term maths investigations year 6 and year 5

• Autumn maths activities
• Halloween maths activities
• Bonfire Night maths activities
• Christmas maths activities and Christmas maths quiz

Spring Term maths investigations year 6 and year 5

• Heart Month Months activities
• Shrove Tuesday Maths activities
• Pancake Day Maths activities
• World Book Day Maths activities
• International Women’s Day Maths activities
• British Science Week Maths activities
• Holi Maths activities
• Easter/Lent Maths activities

Summer term maths investigations year 6 and year 5

• Share-a-Story Month activities
• FA Cup Maths activities
• Walk to School Week activities
• Ramadan Maths activities
• Child Safety Week activities

And if that’s not enough we’ve even got  maths activities  for Year 5 and Year 6 for events you’re likely to celebrate in primary school but don’t come round every year… 

• Red Nose Day Maths activities
• World Cup Maths activities
• Election Maths
• Jubilee Maths activities

Mixed ability maths investigations

We know most of you now teach mixed ability maths classes so something we’re often asked for is year 6 maths activities with a low threshold high ceiling . Take a look at these open ended maths investigations for Year 6 and the rest of Key Stage 2. You’ll also be able to download one of our favourite free teaching resources – 8 low threshold high ceiling activities including the famous fox chicken grain puzzle. 

We’ve also collected the best KS2 maths challenges here for any of your pupils who are working at greater depth in KS2 maths and need further extension in your maths lessons.

Holiday maths activities

We all know about the summer brain drain and how easily children forget what we’ve taught them but it can be difficult to know what to do about it. These summer holiday maths activities were created with parents in mind, you can also use these KS1 and KS2 holiday maths activities to give your pupils lots of fun maths challenges to do over the holidays. 

• Year 3 holiday homework: Don’t Forget Your Maths Pack Year 2 to Year 3
• Year 4 holiday homework: Don’t Forget Your Maths Pack Year 3 to Year 4
• Year 5 holiday homework: Don’t Forget Your Maths Pack Year 4  to Year 5
• Year 6 holiday homework: Don’t Forget Your Maths Pack Year 5 to Year 6

National curriculum maths activities for KS1 and KS2

The final way we’ve organised our KS2 maths activities for you is by national curriculum topic. We’ll continue to add to this section so bookmark this page and check back if it’s useful. Get started:

• 35 times tables games
• KS1 and KS2 place value games and activities  
• 3 minute number facts activity  

Do you have pupils who need extra support in maths? Every week Third Space Learning’s maths specialist tutors support thousands of pupils across hundreds of schools with weekly online 1-to-1 lessons and maths interventions designed to plug gaps and boost progress. Since 2013 we’ve helped over 150,000 primary and secondary school pupils become more confident, able mathematicians. Learn more or request a personalised quote for your school to speak to us about your school’s needs and how we can help.

Primary school tuition targeted to the needs of each child and closely following the National Curriculum.

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FREE 12 Maths Club Activities for Primary Schools (Years 1 to 6)

A collection of games and activities to make maths enjoyable in a primary school maths club!

Minimal resources are needed for each activity.

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