Primary Curriculum

On this page, you will find four groups of resources which will help you embed problem solving into your curriculum:

Curriculum Mapping Documents
Features
Collections
Resources to develop Mathematical Habits of Mind.

If you are an Early Years practitioner, you may well find our Early Years homepage more appropriate than this one.

To find out about the thinking that informs the development of these tasks, read What We Think and Why We Think it.

Curriculum Mapping Documents

Our Curriculum Mapping Documents link NRICH tasks to curriculum objectives.

Age 5 to 11

Primary Curriculum Mapping Documents

The documents on this page contain everything you need to include problem-solving activities in your planning, as they link up the National Curriculum statements with some of our favourite activities.

Features

Our features gather together tasks and articles around a theme. They are very usefully explored during a staff meeting, for example. Our features generally fall into one of the following four categories:

Age 5 to 11

Aims of the National Curriculum

The features on this page are linked to the three aims of the National Curriculum - number fluency, reasoning and problem solving.

Age 5 to 11

Key National Curriculum Content

On this page, you will find features linked to different aspects of the 2014 National Curriculum, including new curriculum content.

Age 5 to 11

Manipulatives

These features focus on how concrete objects can be used as manipulatives in the classroom, and how this can form the basis for problem-solving activities.

Age 5 to 11

Pedagogy

The features listed here come with ideas for embedding the activities into your classroom practice.

Our Primary Curriculum Mapping Document offers our favourite NRICH tasks, organised by curriculum topic and age group.

The tasks also appear in the collections below, which are organised using the same headings, but also offer short descriptions of each task.

Age 5 to 11

Number

This collection of resources will support understanding of number.

Age 5 to 11

Geometry

This collection of tasks focus on the concepts of shape, position and movement.

Age 5 to 11

Measurement

These resources are based around measuring in a variety of different ways.

Age 5 to 11

Statistics

This collection of activities covers the areas of probability and collecting and analysing data.

Mathematical Habits of Mind

In their paper, Habits of Mind: An Organizing Principle for Mathematics Curricula, researchers Cuoco, Goldenberg and Mark call for mathematics curricula to have ways of thinking about mathematics at their core, rather than specific mathematical results. With this in mind, we believe that children learn better when they are curious, resourceful, resilient and collaborative.

Here are some collections of mathematical activities designed to give Primary learners opportunities to develop these desirable characteristics.

Age 5 to 11

Being Curious - Primary Teachers

These problems will exploit primary learners' natural curiosity and provoke them to ask good mathematical questions.

Age 5 to 11

Being Resourceful - Primary Teachers

These problems require careful consideration. Allow your learners time to become absorbed in them.

Age 5 to 11

Being Collaborative - Primary Teachers

These problems are ideal for primary school children to work on with others. Encourage your learners to share ideas, and recognise that two heads can be better than one.

Age 5 to 11

Being Resilient - Primary Teachers

These problems require resilience for primary school children. Encourage your learners to persevere - there's often a great sense of achievement when we've had to struggle.