Exploring numbers

In Autahi we have been exploring number as part of our maths program. We explore numerals, dot patterns and tens frames. These help us to think of numbers in lots of different ways.



We can see numbers on tens frames and put them in the right order.



We can count numbers on the hundreds square.



We can match the numerals on the pegs to the number of stars on the card.





































We play games like mouse count where a sneaky snake comes and gobbles up the mice. We are practising taking away numbers and checking to see how many are left.



We work together with a buddy to share our ideas and check each others thinking.

These are just a few of the ways we engage with numbers in Autahi. There are so many fun things we can do all the time that keep us thinking about numbers.

Teddy Bear's Picnic Continued

Last week our Teddy Bear Picnic inspired learning sparked so much excitement and interest that we have more of that learning to share with you!

Literacy

We read stories about bears during reading time and we wrote about teddies! Look at some of our amazing writing!

We read this story:

Which is all about what our teddies actually do when we're not looking and then we wrote our own versions about what we think our teddies do when we are at school.

We thought about what we needed on a picnic and we had to stretch the sounds of the words and use the stamps to write them.  This is what we call stretchy snake and it is a strategy we learn in reading and writing.

Poetry and Movement: All week we learned this poem Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear and we acted it out with our own teddies!

Numeracy
There were so many ways we linked Teddy Bears' Picnic to maths it was incredible!

Introducing Fractions: We introduced the fraction 1/2 by decorating a picnic mat and thinking about each half having a different pattern. 

Sorting, counting and graphing: We sorted and graphed our teddies by size.  This exercise was really interesting because it caused some confusion around the difference between size and quantity.  Many of us got confused about which teddy we had the least amount of because the 1 was so big!

We also got to sort, count and graph these gummy bears and then we got to eat them too! They were delicious!

Story problems with math buddies: We had a story problem of bears coming over the hill to the Teddy Bears' Picnic and we had to figure out and explain how we figured out how we knew how many teddies were coming to the picnic. 

Some of the ways we explained our thinking was that we knew 5 + 5 =10, so 1 less would make it 9.  Some of us explained that we knew a whole 10 and some more was a teen and others knew 5 + 5 =10 plus 3 more makes 13. 

 

Art and Making: We made our own teddy puppets and we used playdough to make teddy food for the picnic!

Celebrating: At the end of the week we had a family and teddy picnic on top grass.  It was lovely to end our week of ted-tastic exploration and learning with some lovely afternoon tea with our friends, teds and whanau!

Thanks for those who could make it!

Our Maths Learning

        

   As part of our own professional learning we have what we call Triples, where we conduct lessons in front of our triples buddies.  We then reflect on the lessons and get feedback from our buddies.  This helps to inform our practise and our Teaching as Inquiry.  It's also always helpful to see a range of lessons going on throughout the school and get feedback from extra eyes.  This group of kids is working on building their number sense through something called subitising which is being able to instantly recognise sets of numbers without having to count them.  Playing games with dice and tens frames helps with this. 

 

This group has also been exploring number stories to match Pete the Cat and his 4 groovy buttons story.  They listened to the story and as Pete loses his buttons they popped the buttons off his shirt.  Then they made up their own number stories starting with 10 and showing how many buttons he lost and how many were left over.  They did this using a tens frame--another way to create visual representations and to help them keep these numbers in their heads. 

These guys have been working on building buildings for Maths Street.  We were making teen towers.  We made a tower of ten and some more.  Then we wrote the number sentences. 

We are going to continue to build our Maths City.  Look out for bigger numbers!



In Maths we have also started working on repeating patterns.  Have a look at our patterns!