'My House' freebie

 

Hi!

 

I've been working on a resource lately - well, trying to, it's been a pretty busy time in our house with both my little ones hit with gastro :(  I thought I'd share a page from it with you.

 

It's basically a little activity to get students thinking about Number in the context of addresses and house numbers. As a part of History in the new Australian Curriculum, we look at families, so I thought this would be a nice little way to tie in some Number work with that theme.

 

Graphics c www.KPMdoodles.com

If you'd like a copy, just click here :)

 

I'll be back with a game for Friday Game Day tomorrow (hopefully!)... have a great end of the week :)

 

 

 

Beginning of term Sorting Assessment

This has been first week back for the term for me, and it's been busy! I've hit the ground running... which is probably a good thing - otherwise the term is half gone before I realise it!

I'm working across classes R-7 and I thought I'd share the simple little activity we did in one of the Reception classes this week. We have termly intakes in S.A. (for the last time, we start annual intakes next year) so we've had quite a few new kids in the Reception classes this week. Perfect time for a simple little formative assessment activity to get an idea of where the newies are at, as well as seeing how the older kids are travelling!

We gave each child a copy of this sheet (enlarged to A3 so the pics were easier to cut out)....





Click here for a copy of this page, and one other :)



....and asked them to sort the shapes in a  way that made sense to them. We didn't give many instructions, as we really wanted to see how the kids went about it. It was really interesting to see the different ideas kids had, and to get an idea of their sorting and classifying skills.

To extend those kids who could easily classify the objects, we asked questions such as...

Can you count and record how many are in each group?

Can you order the groups from smallest to largest?

Which group has the most/least?

What other ways could you have sorted....?

Are there any objects that could have fitted into more than one group?

We recorded the conversations with students and their explanations on their sheet so we have a record of their thinking..... a simple but effective way to get a snap shot of kids' understandings!

Problem solving pizzas!

 

Last week of holidays for me (and it's rained ALL week long!), so I've been busy planning for the term. I thought I'd share a little problem solving activity that I'm planning for one of the classes that I'm working with this term (I'm working as a Numeracy Coach for the rest of the year). It's a simple little activity to develop problem solving skills using a pizza theme. The class is a multi- year level class, and there's a pretty wide range of abilities, so I wanted to make an activity that could be easily differentiated, using the same material.

 

I'm going to give each student (or pair) a paper plate (which will be their pizza) and a set of pizza toppings (thanks Scrappin Doodles!). Basically, all kids are going to be working on a question relating to making pizzas, just at different levels.

 

 

 

Level 1:

Design a pizza for your friend/parent/teacher. How many pieces of topping are on there? What is there the most of? Least of?

 

Level 2:

I'm making pizza for me, my husband and my two kids. We each want pineapple pizza. Each will need pieces of pineapple, can you help me work out how much pineapple I will need?

 

Level 3:

Each pizza needs 5 pieces of pineapple and 6 pieces of tomato… how many pieces of topping altogether?

 

Level 4:

My daughter's two friends are going to join us for dinner. How many pieces of pineapple now? If a can has 15 pieces in it, how many cans will I need?

 

 

I asked my daughter to have a go at the first question - she really enjoyed it! Hopefully the class does too!

I'll let you know how it goes! :)

 

 

Friday Game Day - The Tens and Ones game

 

 

 

It might be holidays but I've remembered its Friday.... I obviously need a few more weeks holidays! I love it when I forget the day - a sign that I'm truly relaxed and enjoying holidays!

 

Today I thought I'd share a game that was actually taught to me by one of my Prac teachers when I was at uni... it's a game I've played with so many classes since and it's always really popular.

 

 

I call it the Tens and Ones game - not very creative, but it does the trick!

 

The game is played as a whole class, and is great to use as a 'warm up' game with your class at the beginning of you Maths lesson.

 

To start, you will need a pack of cards (Ace=1, picture cards=0) and you'll need to draw the following groups on the board:

 

 

 

The aim of the game is to get one number in each group before getting three strikes. One student takes two cards from the deck of cards and then makes a number from them (for example, if I pulled a 2 and a 4, I could make 24 or 42) and writes it in the correct group.

 

 

 

The next students than takes two cards and does the same, if you can't make a move (the group already has a number in it) a strike is recorded. you continue playing until either all groups are filled (game won!) or you get three strikes (game lost!).

 

 

An easy, fun card game that's great for developing place value concepts as well as strategic thinking :)

 

Which cards games do you like to play with your class?

 

Farm Freebie

 

Hi! I fell like it's been AGES since I've posted anything... the end of term has been pretty hectic, but I'm now on finally on holidays :)

 

Just a quick post today, I wanted to share a little game that's great for Receptions... Pigs and Chooks. I've mentioned before how I like to get the kids to play noughts and crosses to help develop their ability to think strategically, and this game is basically a prettied up version of that!

 

Basically, kids play in pairs - one person uses the chook cards, and another the pigs. the aim is to get four of your cards in a row, either horizontally, vertically or diagonally, just as you would for noughts and crosses.

 

You just need a game board....

 

Graphics c www.kpmdoodles.com

 

...and a copy of the cards for each pair.....

 

 

....and they're ready to play!

 

 

You can grab a copy of this game here if you'd like :)

 

Happy holidays to everyone on school holidays!