'Show Me' Your Strategy!

Today all my groups learned how to use an ipad app called 'Show Me' This app is an interactive whiteboard that allows the students to record their strategies while they explain them. We will be doing this regularly so that you are able to see what the students are learning and it also gives my students a fantastic opportunity to share their thinking and clarify their understanding through an interactive medium.

Group 1 (Year 5's) Group 3 (Year 8's) and Group 4 (Year 8's) are all learning to use Reversibility and Place Value Partitioning to answer addition or subtraction equations. They are working on their video's so keep checking back as they will be uploaded soon : )

Below is Sacred from Group 1 explaining how to use reversibility as a strategy for an addition equation.

  

The video below is of Group 2 (my year 2/3's) explaining today, how they solved an addition equation using Place Value. They are using materials (ice-block sticks) as they have just started on Place Value.

What are Equivalent Fractions?

My students have been learning how to identify fractions as well as add and subtract fractions with common denominators. However, now that they are pretty good at that we are starting to look at equivalent fractions and how we can use them to help us work out equations with differing denominators.

Watch the video below which demonstrates what equivalent fractions are : )

Place Value - What is it all about?

Welcome back to term 2!

My students have gotten straight back into learning all they can about mathematics. 

Today Group 1 and 2 started to look at Place Value. Place Value can be one of the trickier areas for children to understand so we started right at the beginning. I gave each group a task - to estimate the number of ice block sticks in the big pile in front of them. After they had all estimated we discussed which way would be the best and fastest way to count. Some said in two's or fives while others said ten. So they were then asked to bundle each stick in to groups of ten and tie it with a rubber band. This is developing the concept of trading. Children need to understand that when we have ten ones we need to change them into 1 ten (a bundle or group) and ten bundles of ten makes one hundred. Once we had created all our bundles of ten (and/or hundreds) we were able to count together in tens and work out who's estimation was closest to the number of sticks that were in the original pile.

After that we used the sticks and bundles (ones/tens) to form an equation. It was the student's job to work out how many were all together by separating the ones and tens when adding. The year 5's were also using hundreds. See below :)

I Have a Problem!

Here are some problems for you to think about. Have a go working them out and write your answers in the comments box. Good luck!

How many squares on the chessboard below: 

(hint: the answer is not 64 - look again)

Created by Mark Warner -  - www.teachingideas.co.uk

0

9

Problem sourced from http://nrich.maths.org/

Learning to Trade - Place Value

As a warm up, Group 1 played a place value trading game we call 'The Shark Game'. 

In the game there are worms, small fish and a shark. The aim of the game is to win the shark. In order to do that the children must roll two die and whatever number they roll i.e. 8, equates to how many worms they take. Once they have ten worms they can trade these ten for one small fish. They keep taking turns with the die, collecting worms and trading them for small fish until they get ten small fish which they can then swap for one shark and then they win the game. 

This is a great game for reinforcing the fact that in place value we must change 10 ones into 1 ten and when we have 10 tens we change it for 1 hundred. They are quick to pick up this trading aspect with ten quickly, especially if they see that the other students have more small fish!

 

Adding Fractions with Common Denominators

We have started to look at adding fractions with common denominators. This was new to my students so we have spent time previously making sure that we can identify fractions both shapes and sets and discussing in depth how the numerator is the number of parts whereas the denominator is the number of parts in the whole.

So we have now moved on to looking at adding basic fractions. The photos below show what my year 5 group began looking at today. We were using fractions cards and the students had to imagine (or touch the cards to imagine) that they were moving parts of one whole over to the other card. Once we understood that when we have created a whole (fraction) we write it as 1 (whole) and what ever is left over is also written.

So if we add 3/5 + 4/5 we need to take one part or piece from 3/5 and move it to 4/5 which now becomes 5/5's or 1 whole. We mustn't forget that there is still 2/5 left so our answer will be 1 (whole) & 2/5

Take a look at the video below (from youtube.com) which demonstrates how to add and subtract simple fractions with common denominators

Numeracy Home - School Partnership

On Wednesday the 9th April we had our annual Numeracy Home - School Partnership here at Clendon Park. 

This is an evening designed to give parents and caregivers an opportunity to learn practical ways that they can help their children with maths at home. Five teachers including myself ran stations where we showed parents (and their children) how to play maths games and use different activities to help build their maths knowledge. 

It was a very popular night and the children even got to take home a pack with all the games/activities shown so they can keep practicing with their parents at home.

Working towards Stage 7

Both year 8 groups (group 3 & 4) and my year 5 group (group 1) have been working on multiplicative strategies using arrays. Arrays are rows of objects that are used for the children to be able to see groups rather than single objects. The arrays we have been using are animal strips. Each group has started off using the strips to partition (break up) additively then they use multiplication and additive strategies to solve the answer. Using arrays also helps to correct children's misunderstanding of what multiplication looks like i.e. 6 x 3 is 6 groups of 3 whereas 3 x 6 is 3 groups of 6. Though they have the same answer, the arrays look different so using the materials helps clarify this in their minds : )

In the videos below you will see the students explaining their strategy. What the students are doing:

To solve 27 x 6, 

27 is split into 20 and 7 and these parts are multiplied then recombined, as in: 

20 x 6 = 120 

7 x 6 = 42 (or 7 x 5 = 35 and 7 x 1 = 7) 

120 + 42 = 162)

Group 1 (Mya, Heseti, Ripeka, Michael, Sacred)

Group 3 (Paul, Bethel, Teri, Faleupolu, Vera)




Group 4 (Andre, Giovanni, Losana)

Group 4 - Connecting the Pieces

Group 4 (Losana, Giovanni and Andre) have been doing a lot of problem solving lately but yesterday we needed to go back to learning about fractions so that we can see the connection between division, multiplication, decimals and percentages. 

We made fraction charts by folding paper strips into half, quarters, eights and sixteenths. We then looked at basic equivalent fractions like 1/2 which is the same as 2/4's which is the same as 4/8's etc. Then we used sets of counters to represent fractions i.e. a quarter of twelve. We even started to see how any group of objects if they are the same, can be divided equally even a word like apple can be divided into thirds ap/pl/le. Here are some pictures of us working with materials to help our understanding :)

Group 2 - Fractions is a piece of cake!

Group 2 are my wonderful Year 2 and 3 group. Today we looked at fractions, from 1 whole to tenths. Its important when learning fractions that we understand that its not only shapes that can be divided into fractions but also sets.