For this session, I worked on the concept of difference mostly. It worked so much better than last week. I really need to run through the activities before the session if I can though I can't see how there will ever be time.
We started with hi lo. This is a game I should use much more often. It is really straight forward but gets kids thinking and talking about possibilities. In the two sessions I tried to get students to think about what the difference between the current and next one would be and I didn't manage to get that across. I should have had special plus minus cards (e.g. ±6 etc.) with certain differences on that could have been used in a get out of jail sort of way. Maybe anyone who is out has to pick up a card with a particular difference on it and if that comes up, they are back in. It worked well as it was though and should be done more often. Also a good move was to get them to pre arrange a grid of cells to put their answers in. With the second group, I had the conversation at the beginning about which signs to use to show higher and lower. This produced different results. Actually I did ask this in the first class but just got a + sign. In the second class I got arrows, < > and H & L instead.
I moved by giving them some cuisenaire rods and asking them to figure out what numbers they could represent. This ended up as a great activity for exploring for some groups and especially when parents got involved. Not every group jumped on it straight away. I think this should be done in pairs instead of larger groups. Linking it to a story or encapsulating the challenge into a narrative of some sort might improve it. It was a good challenge as it was, especially for the second group. Other extensions might be to get them to prove that the numbers couldn't be a certain set or to say why they can't all be odd numbers or why there could be lots of different possible sets of numbers. Still more meaning needs to be injected here.
That activity moved on to the odd one out quite seamlessly. Other than the fact that some were not sure what criteria created the group or the odd one and that the word odd linked to odd/even which meant that a few chose 3 for the wrong reason. Also getting them to show the 4 number sentences that could come from any group of 3 was neglected which was a shame. I think it is an important link. I think I'll push that in a future session. The triangle template was ok but I should have a set up number sentence template also. Will prepare for next session.
The King and prince's towers was the best breakthrough. The story aspect really helped them get the idea of the challenge. Ax was a star at this activity and did such great work with it (with the help of our facilitator). Id and Mx struggled a bit more with this session but I guess as their first session back it is normal. Still excellent explorers. One issue that came up was building the tower in a more elaborate way than just a column of blocks. Jz came up with a great way to get around trying to create a tower with an odd sum and even difference (pic on right).
Still need to get on to a few more challenge questions. What differences are possible for a given number of bricks? What is the pattern in differences? What patterns can you see? They would need a stronger grounding in odd and even as a concept though.
The ending game needs to be formalised a little but it is really good. I should look into playing it a few times and see what kind of strategies I can find. Again it's odd and even that seems to be the key. In Brixton we'll definitely need an odd/even day.
We started with hi lo. This is a game I should use much more often. It is really straight forward but gets kids thinking and talking about possibilities. In the two sessions I tried to get students to think about what the difference between the current and next one would be and I didn't manage to get that across. I should have had special plus minus cards (e.g. ±6 etc.) with certain differences on that could have been used in a get out of jail sort of way. Maybe anyone who is out has to pick up a card with a particular difference on it and if that comes up, they are back in. It worked well as it was though and should be done more often. Also a good move was to get them to pre arrange a grid of cells to put their answers in. With the second group, I had the conversation at the beginning about which signs to use to show higher and lower. This produced different results. Actually I did ask this in the first class but just got a + sign. In the second class I got arrows, < > and H & L instead.
I moved by giving them some cuisenaire rods and asking them to figure out what numbers they could represent. This ended up as a great activity for exploring for some groups and especially when parents got involved. Not every group jumped on it straight away. I think this should be done in pairs instead of larger groups. Linking it to a story or encapsulating the challenge into a narrative of some sort might improve it. It was a good challenge as it was, especially for the second group. Other extensions might be to get them to prove that the numbers couldn't be a certain set or to say why they can't all be odd numbers or why there could be lots of different possible sets of numbers. Still more meaning needs to be injected here.That activity moved on to the odd one out quite seamlessly. Other than the fact that some were not sure what criteria created the group or the odd one and that the word odd linked to odd/even which meant that a few chose 3 for the wrong reason. Also getting them to show the 4 number sentences that could come from any group of 3 was neglected which was a shame. I think it is an important link. I think I'll push that in a future session. The triangle template was ok but I should have a set up number sentence template also. Will prepare for next session.
The King and prince's towers was the best breakthrough. The story aspect really helped them get the idea of the challenge. Ax was a star at this activity and did such great work with it (with the help of our facilitator). Id and Mx struggled a bit more with this session but I guess as their first session back it is normal. Still excellent explorers. One issue that came up was building the tower in a more elaborate way than just a column of blocks. Jz came up with a great way to get around trying to create a tower with an odd sum and even difference (pic on right).Still need to get on to a few more challenge questions. What differences are possible for a given number of bricks? What is the pattern in differences? What patterns can you see? They would need a stronger grounding in odd and even as a concept though.
The ending game needs to be formalised a little but it is really good. I should look into playing it a few times and see what kind of strategies I can find. Again it's odd and even that seems to be the key. In Brixton we'll definitely need an odd/even day.
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