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!

 

Money, Money, Money

Group 1 had the task of figuring out over two sessions, the total value of each box of dots. There were black, white and grey dots which had values of $1, $2 and .50c. Check out the video below which shows two of the group members discussing their answers.

Below is a picture of their activity and their working out.

Problem Solving

Group 1 & 4 both had problem solving questions to work on today but since they are quite new to it, it was more of an introduction on how to decode the question (what is it asking us to do?).

We also discussed the rules of the group - each member needs to ask questions of each other and use the knowledge of the group before they can ask the teacher. This teaches the students to critically examine their own thinking and helps students to cosolidate learning and learn from each other. Here is the work from today.

As you can see they made a great start : )

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

A Prey Mantis crawled in while we were working which was perfect for the group as they could check the number of legs and add it into the solution to their problem!

Group 4 (Losana, Andre and Giovanni)

They spent a lot of time just trying to work out what the question was asking us by underlining and re-reading. It took them a little while but they got there in the end so they only just started on their problem which can be answered in many different ways. Below they began by grouping and using repeated addition. We will look at faster ways to answer this type of problem when they have run out of their own ideas. With more practice they will be unstoppable  : )

UPDATE: They solved it! check out the second photo.

The question was "In the fruit room there are some apples left over. Carol needs to share these apples out amongst three classes with eighteen students in each class. How many apples does Carol start with?

Term 1 Groups Begin

I am so excited to have begun working with my wonderful students.

I have four groups - 2 x year 8s, 1 x year 2/3 and 1 x year 5's. Here are some of these awesome kids below.

Group 1

Mya, Michael, Ripeka, Sacred, Heseti

Group 2

Serenity, Shaza, Dorothy, Sisilina

Group 4

Giovanni, Losana, Andre

Group 3

Teri, Vera, Faleupolu, Paul, Bethel