Year 5 · Summer term · Negative numbers · Step 1
Year 5 Understand negative numbers worksheets
Read and use negative numbers in lifts, thermometers and distances above and below sea level. A free editable Word sheet with eight fluency and six reasoning questions. The answers follow the questions: the same sheet again with every answer in red.
Download the worksheets
Print on A4 portrait: every page carries the sheet twice, side by side, so you can cut down the middle and two pupils each get a half to stick in their books. Every question sits in its own box and pupils write their answers in their book. The answers follow the questions in the file: the same sheet again with every answer in red. It opens in Word, Google Docs, Pages and LibreOffice, so you can change numbers, delete questions or add your own. There is no scaffolded version of this step yet.
Not scaffolded sheet
The same questions without the extra support. For pupils working at the expected standard: eight fluency questions first, then the reasoning questions.
Sample questions from this step
These are real questions from the first set of the sheet (two from the fluency page, two from the reasoning page). Open each one to see the answer.
- The buttons in a lift show the floors −3, −2, −1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Floor 0 is the ground floor. Work out which floor each person is on now.a) Amir is on floor 1 and goes down 5 floors. Which floor is Amir on now? ____b) Tommy is on floor −1 and goes up 4 floors. Which floor is Tommy on now? ____c) Ella is on floor 0 and goes down 3 floors. Which floor is Ella on now? ____
Show the answer
−4; 3; −3
- Write the missing numbers in the boxes on the number line.A = ____ B = ____
Show the answer
−2, 4
- −3 and −7 are temperatures in °C.−3 is warmer than −7.Is Boba correct? Circle yes or no.Circle yes or no.Explain how you know.
Show the answer
Yes; Yes. −3 is to the right of −7 on a number line, so −3 is greater (warmer) than −7.
- The temperature in Halifax is −5 °C. The temperature in London is warmer than in Halifax, but colder than freezing point (0 °C).Write all the whole-number temperatures that London could be.____
Show the answer
−4, −3, −2, −1
What is on each sheet
- Fluency: eight questions that start easy and get harder, with the key skill of the step practised in different ways.
- Reasoning: questions with pictures, tables and number lines (spot the mistake, true or false and explain, puzzles with one answer, an open-ended task).
- Answers in the same file: the sheet again with every answer in red, so there is only one file to download.
- Boba characters give the instructions in speech bubbles. They are decoration only.
Why one set of questions?
- Everyone works on the same content, and support comes from scaffolds instead of different, easier tasks. This follows the mastery approach described by the NCETM and the thinking in Ofsted's 2021 mathematics research review.
- Worked examples and visual representations lighten the load for pupils who need it, as the Education Endowment Foundation describes.