Got in a little late today but just in time for the explorers. Nettie and Lily's maths-on-toast pelmanism cards were the first activity which was a really nice intro. It was such a simple idea but everyone was well engaged. It got the idea of different operations, number grouping with simple numbers.
It was really effective in terms of seeing different representations of the same number. I wonder if we did enough to get kids to see this or what else we could have done.
Moved back to our area which is much cosier but it might be interesting to start branching out a little to see if we can do things in other parts of the space (especially outside.
Started with the place value investigation. Given a number of blocks and a tens and units column, what numbers can you make. Got them to colour code numbers on the hundred square. This really needed more tens and units columns and for kids to work in smaller groups. They were engaged but so few could take part at a time that it got a bit slow for them. I think if they had been doing it in pairs they could have all been usefully doing stuff. I think that they naturally link well into pairs for that session. Ida and Hana, Lily and Nettie (inseparable) Yunas and Max and possibly Panny and Layla (not sure how well that would work but it's worth pushing for some challenges especially if the challenge can be made to "involve" their toys)
I tried to take this on to digital roots but they had not had enough of a chance to "play" with the first part of the activity and so I found it difficult to get anyone inspired to looking at a new thing. Added to this is the danger that always comes with getting manipulatives out. Kids own ideas will take over and they'll start building things or working on their own ideas which is great but means that my plans become difficult to implement. In this case, Lily engaged with sorting all of the blocks out instead of thinking about the idea or activity being presented.
I decided to cut my losses and took everyone to look at Geoff's curve creations. This worked brilliantly. They could all be asked to give an observation about it and moved us smoothly into using rulers. It also worked really well for a ruler use activity. They got to think about holding the ruler steady and in the correct place and also to think about measuring evenly spaced points on the axis lines. Very good preparation for graphs as Geoff pointed out.
The key to making the curves is to match a part close to the origin on one axis with a point far from the axis on the other. Not every one got this and while making mistakes in that would be really useful if the group were asked about what had gone wrong and how to fix it, I didn't do that with everyone. Still it would be a great way to reintroduce the topic.
Getting explorers to colour in the spaces using two colours went well too. It introduced Hana to the idea (as she had missed the session). Max chose to use quite a few colours which worked well for him. Ida really got into the idea and continued working on the board which was great.
We finished up with angle golf using a clockface for direction and cms for distance. Yunas struggled with the difference between the two numbers he had to give but getting him to point to the number on the clock and then on the ruler was a good strategy. We should play this more often and find a way to introduce angles in this way.
Moved back to our area which is much cosier but it might be interesting to start branching out a little to see if we can do things in other parts of the space (especially outside.
Started with the place value investigation. Given a number of blocks and a tens and units column, what numbers can you make. Got them to colour code numbers on the hundred square. This really needed more tens and units columns and for kids to work in smaller groups. They were engaged but so few could take part at a time that it got a bit slow for them. I think if they had been doing it in pairs they could have all been usefully doing stuff. I think that they naturally link well into pairs for that session. Ida and Hana, Lily and Nettie (inseparable) Yunas and Max and possibly Panny and Layla (not sure how well that would work but it's worth pushing for some challenges especially if the challenge can be made to "involve" their toys)I tried to take this on to digital roots but they had not had enough of a chance to "play" with the first part of the activity and so I found it difficult to get anyone inspired to looking at a new thing. Added to this is the danger that always comes with getting manipulatives out. Kids own ideas will take over and they'll start building things or working on their own ideas which is great but means that my plans become difficult to implement. In this case, Lily engaged with sorting all of the blocks out instead of thinking about the idea or activity being presented.
I decided to cut my losses and took everyone to look at Geoff's curve creations. This worked brilliantly. They could all be asked to give an observation about it and moved us smoothly into using rulers. It also worked really well for a ruler use activity. They got to think about holding the ruler steady and in the correct place and also to think about measuring evenly spaced points on the axis lines. Very good preparation for graphs as Geoff pointed out.
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| Max winning the golf |
We finished up with angle golf using a clockface for direction and cms for distance. Yunas struggled with the difference between the two numbers he had to give but getting him to point to the number on the clock and then on the ruler was a good strategy. We should play this more often and find a way to introduce angles in this way.
I didn't mention individual chances to work develop areas of interest with kids. Max and I talked about Hex, as usual, but I showed him a strategy point. given a small section of the board there is a move that meant read could force a victory and other moves that meant blue could force victory. He saw it pretty quickly but it was a really good interaction for something that I had been trying to do for a while.
ReplyDeleteIt would be good to structure the sessions in suc a way that there is more opportunity for the exploration phase.
And to record things that kids take an interest in and how far they get would be great too. We've talked about this so much and only really made half hearted attempts at dealing with it. It could just be a record of how often kids choose to look at that area. we'd just need to decide how specific an area we deal with. Maybe give them little diaries or something.