Marvellous Maths week 8/9

Last Friday we ended up baking.  The year 4's helped Teina celebrate his 8th birthday by baking him a chocolate cake.  The Y5/6 girls have been exploring fractions and so baking was a practical way of putting their fractional knowledge into practice.  We explored the language of weight and capacity, along with equal shares and measures.  We had a lot of fun and the cake was delicious!

They Y5/6 boys have had great fun playing dice cricket.  There were  quite a few scores for them to add up! 

This week our positive learning focus is on making mistakes.

Mistakes are valuable. Mistakes grow your brain!  It is good to struggle.and make mistakes.  I often say to the children if they didn't struggle, they already knew it...it was knowledge. It is the learning that comes out of the mistake that is so valuable.  You don't often forget it!!  It is good for the children to hear that as adults we are all still learning and making mistakes.  

Have a great week everyone and happy restful holidays.

Baking

Baking on PhotoPeach

Week 7 News

The children will bring home a game called "totality" to play with you this week.  It is a great chance for them to explain how the game is played and the meaning of 'total'.  It is a game that reinforces basic facts. It encourages forward thinking - strategising.  Have fun.

Our new focus is number through patterning.  The children will "tune in" by looking at patterns in their environment, then asking themselves what they notice and wonder.  

 Many of these patterns will be in the form of an array which will lead on to the big idea of equal groupings - repeated addition and multiplicative thinking. We will then make connections with equal sharing and divison.

During our maths sessions we discuss behaviours of strong mathematicians.  Our focus this week is - 

Maths is about Creativity and Making Sense

Maths is a very creative subject that is, at its core, about visualiizing patterns and creating solution paths that others can see, discuss and critique.

What do you notice?

What do you wonder?

How would you share these biscuits between 6 people?

Week 6 News

We had another fun week of maths. The Year 4 's were away on camp for a few days so I only saw them twice.  The Year 5/6's will be away for much of this week. Have fun!!  

The Year 5/6's playing a new game called totality which reinforces basic addition and makes students think about different options for ending up as the winner.  

We had a lot of fun navigating around the school and ended the week with a treasure hunt! 

After camp I'll send home the "totality" game and the children can teach you how to play it.

Totality and Treasure Hunt

Totality and a Treasure Hunt on PhotoPeach

End of Week 1

We have now had a week of getting to know each other and the maths fun has begun. Geometry, position and orientation is our first strand topic. We have been exploring the language of direction and location. The experience of being blind folded and giving, receiving instructions made us all aware of the power of language. We have been exploring the workings of maps and are currently using a map of the school to hunt for certain locations. The Year 5/6's number focus has been on quick recall of basic facts. They have enjoyed playing a card game called "7ate9". I will let them bring it home one night so you can play it as a family. Card and dice games are a fun way to facilitate basic fact learning. The year 4's have been counting a set of objects between 20-50 and have been bundling groups of 10 to help keep track of the count. We are building on the big idea of place value - numbers have a place and a value. Below are some slide shows of our fun and learning.

Exploring Place Value

Place Value on PhotoPeach

Geometry-Position and Orientation

Year 5/6

Year 4

Position and Orientation

Position and orientation on PhotoPeach