Hands on Maths

In term 1 my focus was to get to know my students and this was important because it has guided my practice to date. My class is made up of students of all abilities but the one thing that holds true across my class is that most, if not all of them are hands-on, active learners. I also found my students were far more engaged in their learning if they saw the real-world relevance of what they were learning which is why the following parts of our maths program have been both fun and beneficial for the students.

Maths challenges:
This idea came from a junior classroom I spent time in during university. It began as a way for students to learn the order of the planets (part of our inquiry topic) and ended in a math challenge wall. Every Friday students are given the chance to do their math challenges, which is a knowledge-based maths challenge, e.g. can count backwards from 20-0. The math challenge is their own responsibility, they can practice it at home and at school but the idea is that they take responsibility for their own learning. Their challenges are displayed for them to see. On Friday they can choose to attempt their math challenge. If they pass they go up a planet and receive a certificate. If they don't pass that week they keep the math challenge for another week. Every student starts at different stages so the higher they are doesn't always correspond with their math ability. For example, one student might be on Saturn but is on the challenge identifying numbers to 100 while a student on Mercury could be skip counting backward from 100. Students see great success in this and are always excited to go up a level.

Calender maths:
Calendar maths is a great opportunity for us to talk about numbers. What's the date? What date was it yesterday, what day will it be tomorrow? How many days until the weekend? Students favourite part about the calendar is that it is only a short period of time that they are sitting, they are all capable of answering questions related to calendar maths and they like referring to it for the date throughout the day.

Tally marks rewards system:
The tally marks rewards system came out of thin air. When we had sticker charts I used to tally mark who was getting stickers in the corner of the board to remind myself to put up stickers. One day we were doing a math activity where they had to find a number then go write it up on the board. Some students wrote the word, others wrote the number and a couple of the students did tally marks. I hadn't specifically talked about tally marks so I was surprised when I realized the students had picked up on tally marks without specific teaching. The following week I decided to do specific teaching on it so students understood exactly what they were doing. We did surveys on favourite animals of students, favourite colours, favourite ice cream flavours etc. This just happened to be during a time students were moving away from the sticker charts and needed an 'older' way to praise positive behaviour. The tally system worked well. For every event on the board (e.g. Kiwi Can) the students can earn up to 5 points as a class. 5 meaning awesome work, 1 meaning needs to do better next time. Students tally them and every morning we count the tally's from the day before and count out that amount of tally's into marbles which then go into our marble jar. This idea came from the kids so the buy in has been big.

Hands on maths:
I do a lot of hands maths in my class. Not just using equipment (although we do use A LOT of equipment) but also things that get students moving. For example taking photos on their iPads of all the number 7's they can find in the classroom or finding 4 different things that are the shape of a triangle.  The cool part about this is that students can be set tasks that are tailored to their learning needs. Another example of our hands on maths is through games. I noticed many of my students hadn't played games like snakes and ladders, trouble, fishy fishy or any game that involved dice. This became very evident in their gaps of knowledge regarding dot patterns. These sorts of games catered to all the different levels in my class and all of them enjoyed them and were capable of participating. The posters in the photo above are one of the newest activities I have made for students. The students have to screw the bottle cap answers onto the end of the equations. The students like the tactile part of this activity.

Morning maths board:
The morning maths board is the newest addition to my morning routine. It aims to get students talking about maths and using maths terminology (an area I have identified as a work on). It starts with a number of the day, we do the number before, we do the number after. Double it, half it, odd or even. Students learn how to tell the time, what different shapes are, their vertices and their edges. They get to look at fractions, tens frames and different maths problems all within a 10 - 15 minute window. If there is an area in math that students need to focus on then there is room for it on the maths board. Students get to come up and put numbers up (which gets them moving) and there is something on the board for everyone to have success. As they get better the questions are able to get harder and more conversation is able to be had. Kids love it, I love it and the best part is, it is done and dusted within the morning routine.