Maths Is Fun

www.mathsisfun.com

KS2 (Years 3 - 6)

Mathematics

Description

This website is a no-frills resource for students of Mathematics at Key Stages 2 and above. It contains over 100 pages and covers a wide range of mathematical areas. Navigation is simple, with a well-designed navigation bar and plenty of ‘Back to Top’ links. All links on the site work perfectly. Another useful feature is the A–Z site map.

Many of the site’s pages are simply examples and explanations of mathematical processes (for example the four rules of fractions, or the page showing area and perimeter formulae for various shapes). Other pages are more interactive however and provide the opportunity to demonstrate (equations of graphs), or practice (tables and general arithmetic) skills.

There are also printable nets of the five platonic solids. There are some useful ideas for co-ordinates, which will appeal to children, as well as some logic puzzles, including the Tower of Hanoi. There are several simple games on the site, although not all with a mathematical flavour. There is a page of links to a variety of Maths websites.

All the pages on the site consistently loaded without any problems.

Supporting Documentation

None, although the site has a useful A–Z index which one of my Year 6 pupils found useful when looking for the net of a polygon. This index lists and offers around 110 links to places within the site.

Technical Support

The site does not offer technical support, but does offer a Discussion Forum. However, this is not vetted, and many postings were abusive. Some genuine queries were posted, but many of the responses were not the sort of thing one would wish a class to read and the standard of writing in the questions was on the whole appalling.

Purpose of the Program

This website aims to provide a variety of mathematical information, techniques and problems, as well as to offer some old and new puzzles and their solutions. Many pages contain some basic, but useful interactive features, for example a mental arithmetic question-generator and the Tables Tester. Some JavaScript games are also included.

Curriculum Relevance

Nearly all of the topics covered on the website are part of the National Curriculum for Mathematics. There are topics from Key Stages 2 (Polygons, Tables, Area and Perimeter), as well as some Key Stages 3 and 4 topics (Four rules of fractions, Long division, Equations of lines, Circle formulae, Pythagoras, etc). There is also a section on Texas Instrument Calculators, which might be useful for teachers planning to introduce them to a class. At present this contains only one downloadable rtf file and a working link to the Texas Instruments website.

Extent

No claims are made with regard to breadth of coverage. As mentioned above, there are topics from Key Stages 2, 3 and 4.

Appropriateness

The website makes no claims with regard to a target audience and as such it is impossible to assess appropriateness.

Quality

The factual content pages are simply designed and accurate. The quality of the information is very good and presented in an easy-to-read format.

Both onscreen testing sections have an element of differentiation built in. The Tables Tester allows the user to focus on a single times table, or answer questions on a mixture of several tables. The Arithmetic Tester lets the user choose addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division and to choose from three levels of difficulty.

This website is a no-frills resource for students of Mathematics at Key Stages 2 and above. Each page is clear and quick to load. Navigation is simple, with a well-designed navigation bar. All links on the site work perfectly. Another useful feature is the A–Z site map. Many of the site’s pages are simply examples and explanations of mathematical processes. Other pages are more interactive, however, and provide the opportunity to demonstrate or practice skills and in this respect the website does well. There is a page of links to a variety of Maths websites. There are also printable nets of the five platonic solids, which proved popular with my Year 6 class, and several simple games and logic puzzles, including the Tower of Hanoi.

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Product Overview

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