We have three simple, ready-to-go activities for you to use as lesson starters, form time or anywhere you need a calm, focused beginning. They’re quick to dip into, easy to repeat, and flexible enough to use in different ways. Sometimes, that’s all you need to get things moving.

1. NumBots Scrapheap Stories

2. Bot Trumps

Bot Trumps is a simple card game for two or more players, featuring our bright and fun NumBots characters. Each card comes with scores for positivity, courage, determination and resilience, making it easy to play and quick to pick up.

Access by logging in and heading to Downloads > Activities.

3. Represent

Kick off your lesson with our free card game, designed to familiarise students with the different representations used in the classroom.

Access by logging in and heading to Downloads > Activities.

If you can, please share any photos of your class using our activities to support@mathscircle.com, or our social media channels:

X – @NumBots
Instagram – @numbots
Facebook – NumBots

If you want to set your school up with MyLogin SSO, give the friendly team at Wonde an email: hello@mylogin.com

Don’t use Wonde but want to know more? Click below…👇👇👇

The stories can be enjoyed together as a whole class (or school) via YouTube, or if your class have access to individual headphones and tablets, you can set them up to listen on any main streaming platform. Whilst they are listening, they can enjoy the accompanying creative activity.🎨✂✏

Now you’re caught up on the what and the why’s, let’s start on the when’s! Here are eight ways to use the NumBots Scrapheap Stories during school:

2. Wet play

☔ The bad news is, it’s raining outside…but the good news is, you can still bring some sunshine into your classroom! ☀️

This is the perfect opportunity to enjoy the creative worksheets!

Best way to listen: YouTube

3. PSHE or Values lessons

The stories promote values similar to those that you might teach at school: respect, perseverance, teamwork, resilience as well as others.

The aim of the stories is to give children a takeaway that can help them develop positive mindsets for learning and for life! They provide children with reference points to turn to in their own lives when they face a challenge. That’s why they are the perfect PSHE teaching tool!

Best way to listen: YouTube or Spotify (with headphones)

4. Once the class has finished their NumBots practice

Does your class have a tendency to finish their NumBots or maths practice quickly? If you’ve got 10 minutes to spare at the end of the lesson, reward your students with a 10 minute growth mindset story.

Best way to listen: Spotify (with headphones)

5. Storytelling lessons

NumBots may provide core maths skills, but the NumBots Scrapheap Stories can act as a literacy tool. Audio stories have been found to improve reading fluency in children, as well as helping them develop emotional skills. We’ve also provided the transcripts for each story so students can learn to read alongside the narration.

Helpful articles:
EdSurge: Breaking Barriers to Literacy: Using Audiobooks to Overcome Reading Challenges

National Literacy Trust: We release research review on the benefits of audiobooks on literacy

Best way to listen: YouTube or Spotify (with headphones)

6. Golden Time

Do you run dedicated sessions during the week to reward good behaviour? What better way than to reward them with an uplifting, motivating robot-themed story?🤖

Best way to listen: YouTube or Spotify (with headphones)

7. Assemblies

If you promote values in assemblies then listening to one of our stories is a fun and engaging way to demonstrate growth mindsets and positive attitudes to children. Each story is approximately 10 to 15 minutes long. 🎥

Best way to listen: YouTube

Bruno Reddy, CEO:

Select a story to enjoy!👇

Behind the Scenes…

Each 10-minute story incorporates a different growth mindset, with the aim to develop children’s confidence and resilience, setting them up for success in maths, and in life more generally.

Exploring themes such as practising little and often, teamwork, asking for help, stepping out of your comfort zone, and overcoming fears, the NumBots Scrapheap Stories can help to start conversations about healthy attitudes and positive mindsets.

At the end of each story, Rusty is on-hand to ask the little listeners a set of thought-provoking questions about the stories. This way, you can continue the conversation, or simply reinforce the message of the story.

Once the questions are finished, enjoy the creative activity set by Rusty. You can download each story’s activity and the transcript for each story should you wish to read them yourself! To access the resources, head HERE and select your chosen story.

The Feedback…

Miss Harding, Swallowfield Primary School:

Swallowfield Primary School is LOVING NumBots Scrapheap Stories. See their reactions to the stories…

Bruno Reddy, CEO:

Select a story to enjoy!👇

Like everything we do at Maths Circle, this upgrade is not just about aesthetic improvements. We went back to the beginning and asked ourselves:

1. What do our users need from Challenge Mode?

2. How does it support sound pedagogical practice?

Have a look at Challenge Mode’s improvements:

Check out the new and improved Challenge Mode!

Challenge Mode now unlocks when children pass Iron (Stage 2) level 26 in Story Mode.

There are 30 Challenges in total which each belong to one of these four topics:

• Subitising (new)

• Number Bonds

• Adding

• Subtracting

Each Challenge focusses on one set of facts at a time – aligning with the work of Number Sense Maths.

During Challenge games, children attempt to answer as many questions as they can correctly in one minute. Unlike in Story Mode, which is highly visual to support learning, the questions in Challenge Mode are normally abstract (i.e. they don’t involve pictorial representations or mathematical models), in order to consolidate learning and improve efficiency of recall. Therefore children shouldn’t be encouraged to play a Challenge game until they’ve passed the levels teaching that topic in Story Mode.

Children replay Challenge games in order to beat their high scores, climb the leaderboards* and earn trophies and certificates.

The best bits:

• Quick and easy to practise the topic you want to improve.

• Children can self-identify where their weaknesses are in a positive way, by seeing which Challenges they are yet to earn a trophy for.

• Excellent for playing in class or against other players in your organisation – children are excited to appear on the leaderboards*.

• Grown-ups can track children’s performance and see how much they’ve improved at each calculation strategy.

• Personalised certificates build self-confidence and enthusiasm for mathematics.

They’re our top five favourite things about Challenge Mode. What are yours?? Go try it out and let us know!

* The leaderboards are only visible to children and grown-ups in your organisation (they’re not public) and they display players’ robot names, not their real names. While NumBots leaderboards normally encourage healthy, motivational competition, some teachers prefer not to allow children to see each other’s high scores. In this case they can hide the leaderboards from pupils by logging into their teacher account here, then going to “Settings & Admin” (in the left hand menu).

What exactly is a rekenrek?

The rekenrek contains two parallel bars; ten beads are threaded onto each bar.

The beads sit on the right hand side of the rekenrek when they are not being used. The user pushes the beads they require to the left when they are using them.

How is it different to other abacuses?

The key difference is that on each bar of the rekenrek, the first five beads are red and the last five are white. This transforms the rekenrek from a counting tool, to a subitising tool!

As well as being able to feel and visualise the number of beads, children can see how each number relates to 5 and 10. (For example, if they are asked to “Show 7” on the rekenrek, the children will know to push the five red beads and 2 of the white beads to the left, rather than count out 7 beads one by one.)

Children are encouraged to push the beads to the left as a group, rather than one bead at a time, as this moves pupils on from counting in ones and improves their number sense.

What are they used for?

As well as improving children’s understanding of each number, the rekenrek is particularly useful for establishing the base-10 system and explaining addition methods which refer to it.

Furthermore, using the “concrete” manipulative helps children to understand physically how whole numbers can be made up of two parts (part + part = whole).

The parallel bars of beads also enable children to compare two numbers. As a result, the rekenrek can be used in the classroom to support discussions about commutativity, more than/less than, calculating the difference between two numbers and subtraction.

How are rekenreks used in NumBots?

Given the many ways that rekenreks can support children learning maths, we decided to incorporate them into Story Mode on NumBots. The rekenrek levels have now joined all our other virtual manipulatives, including classroom favourites such as dienes and bar models.

Check a few of our favourite rekenrek levels out for yourself:

• Iron – Level 23
• Copper – Level 12
• Steel – Level 7

Prior to these additions, we have ensured that NumBots is compatible with screen readers, therefore other visually impaired children receive help with navigating around the screen. Additionally, parents and teachers can adjust the time settings to a suitable level for a child’s pace.

To read more about how to change difficulty settings, read here:
Change difficulty on Story Mode (Parents)
Change difficulty on Story Mode (Tutors)
Change difficulty on Story Mode (Teachers)