Working with friendly numbers

The year 1s and 2 s in Lynn and Sue's class have been working with friendly numbers. Here are a couple of examples form the classroom walls. The students could chose the numbers that they wanted to work with.

Allowing the students to have such choice allows them to feel free to experiment and challenge themselves.

The students can then be engaged in differentiating the task to suit their current confidence level.

Well done Sue, Lynn and their class and to Ludig, one of the students in the class who reads this blog.

Multiplication Tables

Two books in the 'Back to Basics' series,  'Multiplication Tables', Ann has written cover multiplication tables.

Let’s dip inside and have a look at what makes these two books so special.

Ann has taken the thinking-teachers' approach to helping children become masters of their multiplication tables and starts by giving them a vocabulary with which they can describe the strategies that they might use to work out an unknown fact.
 
In the second book, Ann shows how to use tallies to work out one of those troublesome multiplication facts:

With games and ‘beat the calculator’ activities, these books are full of bright new ideas for helping children over the multiplication tables hurdle. For more information, visit www.pascalpress.com.au/back-to-basics/

Bridging through ten and one hundred

Sue Carey and Lynn Smart, year 1/2 teachers at Torrensville Primary School have been working on bridging through ten and one hundred.

The photos below show the examples that the students made using Kidpix.

Around the classroom posters made by the students as shown below are on display. In these two classes the students differentiate for themselves by choosing the numbers that they want to work with. As you can see from the second photo below, the class drips with student produced maths materials.

Sue said her whole display used to be literacy but now their are tons of maths every where around the room.
Watch out or more from Sue and Lynn later in the week.

A problem solving mathematical journey

Rita Romano from Lefvre Peninsular Primary School keeps an A3 sized maths journal for her class.

Every maths lesson is recorded with photos and/or student work. It tells the story of the mathematical journey that her class is taking. Parents love it, the students love it and use it as a resource during their problem solving.

Rita did my favourite lesson where a large number of paddle pop sticks are dumped on the floor. Students estimate how many and then find their own ways into counting.

It makes magnitude of large numbers visible and leads to students really understanding why base ten is so important. Rita gave me permission to show case these three pages from her book. I am hoping for more at a later date.

Read and enjoy. Thanks Rita!

About Time!

A new series of 10 books written by Ann have just been released by Pascal Press. Last week we gave you a preview of the Addition and Subtraction books, this week we’ll start with the book about Time.

In the early sections of the book, Ann emphasizes the difference between the hour and minute hands by introducing the hour hand alone before showing both hands on the clock face. 


What times are showing on these clock faces?

A gentle introduction to the past the hour and to the hour times is also featured as the research into children’s abilities with time show these to be common stumbling blocks. The book also relates the digital clock to the analogue clock as well as setting the scene for understanding calendars.

This book in the series matches well with our new package called Telling the Time, that is described at

http://naturalmaths.com.au/kt_Time.php

The sections on Calendars also match well with one of our IWB programs, Calendars, which you can preview at  http://naturalmaths.com.au/kt_iwb_Calendars.php

How a shopping list for Snow White helps students with problem solving

Darienne Crickmar of Victor Harbour R - 7 School has been doing problematised situations with her reception students. Her latest problem was related to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Snow White had to make a shopping list for their dinner. They each wanted: 

• 2 sausages
• 3 carrots
• 5 potatoes
• 10 peas.

When the children started solving the problem they decided that Snow White needed to eat as well, hence 8 plates of food. The following work samples have been annotated by Darienne after she interviewed the children about their solution strategies. One of the samples is incomplete but it shows what a child who has only been at school for a few weeks can do. Notice how clever Darienne has been in her selection of numbers, counting by twos, fives and tens is part of the curriculum.

Doing it in a problem solving situation leads to purposeful skip counting not simply rote counting. Enjoy. Thank you Darienne for an interesting problematised situation.

What a joke!

Recently I was in the year 4/5 class at Angaston Primary School where I noticed maths joke posters displayed across the wall. I told the teacher, Michelle Goudie that I thought they were very funny and very well done. Last week when she was part of the DECD Day 3 (maths) with me she handed me a spiral bound book of the posters.

So Michelle thank you very much. With permission I have included just a few of the posters. I hope you enjoy these as much as I do.