Whole Numbers — NSW Year 7 Maths
The everyday toolkit for whole numbers: rounding, multiplying, dividing, powers, roots and primes. Twelve subtopics and 240 practice questions, each with a fully worked solution, aligned to NESA outcome MA4-IND-C-01.
Whole Numbers in NSW Year 7
Whole Numbers brings together the number skills that the rest of Year 7 maths relies on. Some of it consolidates what students met in primary school, such as rounding, written multiplication, long division and Roman numerals. The rest is new Stage 4 work: writing numbers as powers, finding square and cube roots, using divisibility tests and breaking numbers into prime factors.
The twelve subtopics below begin with estimating and the written methods for multiplying and dividing, then move through divisibility tests, long division and Roman numerals. The second half covers index notation, roots, primes, prime factors, the highest common factor and the lowest common multiple. Whole Numbers is one of the 13 topics in NSW Year 7 Maths and belongs to the Number and Algebra strand (NESA outcome MA4‑IND‑C‑01). These skills feed straight into fractions, the index laws and algebra later in Stage 4.
Subtopics
Whole Numbers: common questions
What is covered in Whole Numbers in Year 7?
Rounding and estimating, written multiplication and division, divisibility tests, Roman numerals, powers, square and cube roots, primes and prime factors, and the HCF and LCM. Several of these revise primary-school skills before the new Stage 4 work.
How do you write a number as a product of prime factors?
Split the number into a factor pair, then keep splitting until every factor is prime. For example, \(72 = 8 \times 9 = 2 \times 2 \times 2 \times 3 \times 3\), which is \(2^3 \times 3^2\) in index form.
What is a common mistake with powers?
Multiplying the base by the index. \(2^5\) means \(2 \times 2 \times 2 \times 2 \times 2 = 32\), not \(2 \times 5 = 10\).
Which NESA outcome covers whole numbers in Year 7?
Powers, roots, divisibility tests and prime factors sit under Stage 4 outcome MA4‑IND‑C‑01 in the NSW Mathematics K–10 Syllabus (2022). The HCF and LCM support fraction work under MA4‑FRC‑C‑01, while rounding, written methods and Roman numerals revise primary-school skills.
What comes after whole numbers in Year 7?
The HCF and LCM are used to simplify, compare and add fractions, and index notation leads to the index laws later in Stage 4. Estimating is used everywhere to check that answers make sense.