We are very excited to have launched NumBots with our Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 children at St Catherine’s. It is an online learning platform that we are using to support children’s understanding of number bonds and to help their addition and subtraction skills. These are the essential building blocks for higher-level maths concepts, so we are excited by the impact that NumBots will have on our children’s learning.
As the children progress through the levels in ‘Story Mode,’ the emphasis is on learning the ideas and concepts behind addition and subtraction so it features more diagrams, representations and question styles. Children earn coins and experience and then the questions become progressively harder. Later on, the children can use ‘Challenge Mode,’ the emphasis is more on speed of recall of key facts, like number bonds to 10, doubling small numbers or adding and taking away in their head.
In order to get the best out of NumBots, we recommend that children play regularly for short bursts at a time, aiming for up to ten minutes a day. Little and often practise is often more effective than very long sessions.
