equations session 5 - eval

Final and most focused session yet.  We looked at calculations by exploring the link between rectangles and multiplication.
Far more homework appeared this week but I didn't really have an activity ready to show it to others and so missed that opportunity.  It's great that so much was done. I would really like to check what type of activity has happened.  Some ideas that seem to head in the right direction. Homework is posted on one of 3 or 4 walls depending on what type of activity they did or what type of question they explored.  This could raise the profile of exploration and facilitate a way to show off work and have others benefit from it.
Rectangular Number Islands was an activity that explorers were prewarned about.  I'm not sure if this had an impact or got enough from the video or watched it.  We needed to explain the activity quite a lot.  It was not necessarily a bad thing though as we got to see how explorers responded to the task and some of their assumptions.  It allowed the next activity to have clearer instructions.  Out of a group of 10 or so, it was only 3 or 4 who knew enough details to explore.  The rest had to ask or wait until we asked how they were doing.  The beauty of this as a creative activity, lots of explorers can get on with something on the map.  Also, there were a lot of examples of peer checking and support once people had put rectangles down.  Lots of types of conversation went on in the session.  They checked each others rectangles and helped with calculations.  Once it started to take shape they shared other aspects of the graph and drew pictures.
We had a few minutes at the end looking at involving rectangles in nested calculations.
First match calculations with rectangles                                                            
See if I can make new numbers by combining different types of calculation.
We didn't get on to explore the different calculators' responses to the some of the questions.
We had some interesting discoveries.  O was fantastic.  He tried a lot of different things with the rectangles to actually explore how the maths worked.  He had a subtraction and one of the adults helping the groups showed him how putting one shape on top of the other could help him see the difference.  O asked about minus numbers and said that he wasn't so sure of them but was confident enough to ask.  While initially reluctant to devote energy to understanding that, he tried a few things and then asked a few questions about it such as, how could we write it if it's negative ("Oh, it's the same as minus")  or "How do I know if it's minus or not?"
We had a quick plenary session where we talked about discoveries made.  All made possible by the power of the circle time I suspect.  It would be great to have a book of discoveries or some other kind of hall of fame type thing for explorers to have their achievements recorded.  A book that is regularly on display perhaps or a photo with a shield that can be written on and a picture can be taken with it.   The big work on display for explorers to look at at the end was also a good idea.