10 Maths Apps for 2013

Here is a collection of the ten most popular and used Maths apps by myself , my boys and teachers at my school. Therefore this is not just a copy and paste of details from the app store, these apps have been road tested in the home and/or the classroom.

**Little Digits – Cowley Owl – £1.49**

An innovative way to aid children as they learn to count with their fingers. Quite simply, however little digits many of your ten fingers you place on your iPad that is the number shown and spoken back to you. Charlie, who is 4 , used this with me and we found that we could collaborate with numbers over 5 by using some of his fingers and some of mine. It was a lovely way to help him learn to count.

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What Time is it Mr Wolf? – Teacher’s Pet – £0.69

I have found children in Key Stage 1, Foundation Stage and older children enjoy this app. Use it as a fun way to help children to read the time by matching words with clocks. A step on from all those pages of ink stamped clocks i was used to in Junior School. My boys at home love the Wolf character who feeds back to you with his very wolfie voice. Whereas, for me as a teacher the ability to customise the app to work on specific times and alter the difficulty level makes this a very versatile and well designed learning tool.

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Number Bonds Pro – Frogmeleon – £0.69

Just like quick recall of multiplication tables, a sound working knowledge of number bonds gives children the building blocks for tackling more complex computations. Number Bonds Pro provides a structured, fun and customisable means of securing knowledge of these facts. Up to four different users per device can learn through a combination of tests and flash cards. The range of numbers looked at , the position of the missing number/answer and the difficulty level can all be changed to suit the learner. I use this and the other 3 Frogmeleon apps with my son, Leo, a year 3 child with learning difficulties. I like the way we could hone in on the number range that provided just the right level of challenge. We were also able to make the tests more accessible by disabling the timer function and allowing him multiple choice rather than keyboard entry. Following the tests we worked on the review section looking at the questions he’d got wrong.

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MultiFlow – Dactyl Applications – £1.49

This is one of the first apps I installed on our school iPads. It is popular with our pupils and used at school and home. Essentially it allows children to choose the multiplication tables they need to consolidate and work through a series of questions. Learners can also choose the difficulty level and for the more able learners the list of tables to work on extends to 20. My class enjoys using this to refine and sharpen their tables knowledge, while some pupils go further and try to improve their recall of the 17 or 19 times table. This app forms a component of my oral mental starter programme and is also an app we recommend to parents.

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Early Birds: Times Table Training – Key Stage Fun – £0.69

This is another take on learning multiplication tables. As with other similar apps children can select which table they need to work on. Then rather than presenting children with a series of questions they get a set of answers instead. Well, a set of bird eggs showing products for the times table they are working on along with irrelevant numbers too. The task is
to identify the products as quickly as possible. Successfully complete a level and you are rewarded with a rather special egg, each of these has their own fact card. A nice touch and one of the reasons why my year six class regularly ask to “go
on Early Birds, sir”.enjoy this app. Use it as a fun way to help children to read the time by matching words with clocks.

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Achieve Level 4 – Rising Stars – £3.99

This is a must for Year 5 or 6 classrooms as part of a structured programme of Maths revision. The app contains over 200 new questions on each area of the Maths curriculum for Key Stage 2. Year 6 pupils have been successfully using text books with the same title for home learning for a number of years. The app offers a more engaging and interactive means of revision. This is partly because the content is presented on-screen, which I have found often makes things more attractive. But there is also a gamification element in both the visual progress tracking and upon successful completion Level 5 questions are unlocked.

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Go Count – Derek Huby – £0.69

Children need to experience different visual representations of numbers before they fully grasp their value. Go Count does this well with sets of aeroplanes landing, tractors parking and fireworks ready to fire. Count the amount shown correctly and fireworks explode, planes fly away and tractors drive off. This is a must for the Foundation Stage or, as I use it, at home with your under 5s.

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Banana Hunt- Interactive Resources – £0.69

Interactive Resources have been making whiteboard Maths teaching tools since whiteboards began to replace blackboards. I have been reliant on tools such Maths Pack and Teaching Time as a way of bringing concepts to life for my class for some time. It is really exciting to see their trusted whiteboard tools transforming into apps. This way more children can get access to them, rather than just the child that he teacher has chosen to demonstrate. In Banana Hunt the object if the game is to locate the bananas, these are hidden at a given angle on a circle. The closer you get to the angle, the more bananas you or rather your monkey will get. I use this with my Year 6 pupil in order for them to get a better mental image of angles other than 90 degrees.

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Solids Elementary- Synergy IT £1.49

This app allows learners to select a 3D shape, spin it around and explore it from every angle. Counting faces, sides and vertices is easily done as each of these can be displayed and coloured. What’s more, the solids can be gradually opened up to show the nets of each shape. These features are proving to make this a very helpful tool in assisting my class grasp the properties of 3D shapes, along with all the associated vocabulary.

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Dirt Bike Comparing Fractions – Arcademic £0.69

Bringing both gamification and collaboration to a challenging topic, this app make comparing fractions fun. Learners can play against the computer, begin their own game, which others can join or play against who ever happens to be online at the time. Two fractions are shown with a missing sign between them, players need to decide whether to complete the number sentence with either a <, – > or an =. There are sixteen similar apps from Arcademic Skills builders all with the online collaboration aspect, which my class really love.