What's Going on in Maths?

We have had a big focus on Maths this term as our staff PLD has been around Maths and teachers are trying our Teaching as Inquiries around different maths principles.  Some of the ideas we have been exploring are:

• the importance of using materials
• different ways to show and explain our thinking
• making maths connected to real life

Have a look at some of what we have been up to in maths recently!

These guys were asked some story problems.  They had to listen to the problem, figure out what it was asking, and choose the materials they wanted to use to best solve the problem.  Then they had to write and explain what they did to solve the problem.  Some chose to use a number line and counters and used counting on.  Some used tens frames and used counting on.  Others counted all the counters.  We also were able to explore how we could use tens frames to change a problem from 9+8 to 10 + 7 by moving one counter.  These guys have been learning that 10 + any single digit number is a teen, so they were able to see how easily they could use their knowledge of teen numbers to solve problems.  

Like our word rockets we have number busses.  This is to help the home--school connection around our learning.  In the class at the moment we are working on identifying numbers, finger patterns and tens frames.  So that is what is in our number busses to practise at home as well.  These visualisations help us to solve problems by using facts we know.  We are also working on explaining how we know.  Did we just count them all, or do we see 5 fingers and 1 more and know it's 6? This explanation helps us to be flexible with numbers. 

In our discovery time we also have maths challenges which ask questions and push us to think.

This week the challenge was around volume and capacity and within this we had to use estimating, counting, checking, and teamwork. 

The challenge was lots of fun and was a bigger number than we thought we would get.  

Stay tuned for more challenges in our discovery time and around the room.  Help me find the maths all around me! We can look at house numbers, play games with dice and cards, or count the number of steps from one room to the next in our house!