Last Post for 2011

Thankyou children and whanau for using this blog. All the children in the Central Maths Stars group have made excellent progress this year. I hope the activities on this blog have made your Maths learning enjoyable. The blog will remain open so you can continue to access the links on it. We have appreciated your feedback and wish you all the best for the holidays. Year 6's who are leaving us we wish you every success in the future

Term Four Week 2

We have posted a link to the Taranaki Sprints on the Matanginui Wiki. When you open them you will see there are 100 questions for each one. We have set a 4 minute time limit for each of them (The record is 1 minute 8 seconds)

The photos below show the resources we have been using to learn fractions. We keep the main ideas as simple as possible. The main idea being that the top number in the fraction tells us how many pieces we have and the bottom number tells us how many pieces to make 1 whole or how big each piece is. When we say a fraction we are saying that anyway. 3 quarters means we have 3 pieces and they are quarters.

We have also had our 200th visitor to our blog. Thankyou to those parents who continue to follow our progress on our blog.

Term Four Week One

Our first week back at school. We spent our time revising last terms work on Basic Facts and Place Value.
We also introduced "Taranaki Sprints" as a way of increasing our speed of recall for times tables. I will attach an example sheet of what they look like.
Although this term is short we are very focussed on our learning as this is our last 8 weeks together.
Next week we will begin Fraction Knowledge learning.

Week Ten

Attached are photos of some of the work we have been doing in our books. You will see the children are dealing with quite complex place value activities now. They have made excellent progress in understanding place value. The real key is the sense of size of each place value column. Each time we move left it is 10 times bigger.

I have also added a 6 times tables rap to the Blog.....Enjoy!

Week Nine

The last week of Term 3. It has been fantastic to see the progress being made this term. Our blog has had 147 new visitors and nearly 500 page views.
Attached are more photos of the work we have been doing. It is important to note the understanding being developed behind the Family of Facts work. We used materials to initially construct the times tables and look for patterns. It is also important to explore the concept of the commutative law of multiplication, equally important is that it cannot be used for division. With this understood the children quickly realised that by knowing 1 fact (eg 4 x 5 = 20) they could easily construct the other 3 facts in the family.
Hopefully everyone has a good break and i look forward to great progress in Term 4.

Week Eight

This week we have spent time consolidating our understanding of decimal place value and have been developing understanding of Family of Facts based on the 5 times tables. The photos attached show some of the book work and games the children have been using over the past few weeks

Week Seven

Hi everyone,
We have moved into the exploration of Decimal Fraction Place value from this week. We have used the "Decipipes" as our initial model. You can see from the attached photos that the decipipes allow us to model tenths and hundredths easily.

 It did not take the children long to understand the concept of ten tenths equalling 1 whole. Another important aspect of our learning has been an indepth exploration of the decimal point. The fact that it separates whole numbers from parts of mumbers is very important, from there it is an extension of our whole number place value system, it certainly follows the same "Rules".

The children continually make links between this new learning and the "Song Videos" which use the same Place Value language .
Basic Fact learning is based around 2, 5 and 10 times tables. The 10 times tables are our "Ty" numbers anyway, so the job of the teacher is to make the link to the childrens existing knowledge of this.

The 2 times tables are there doubles (which they already know and have been practicing). The 5 times tables can be explored through number patterns on a hundreds board or a similar piece of Place Value equipment. It is also very useful to link the 5 times to their existing 10 times table.
EG   3 x 10 = 30
        3 x 5 = 15  and 6 x 5 = 30
I will explore this last idea in the next posting.

Week 6

This week we have started to introduce the ideas around decimal place value. it was important to establish whole number place value first however. The children are now far more confident at reading and saying very large numbers as well as identifying numbers 1, 10 and 100 before and after. The children have also found the videos very motivating.
We have still been focusing on addition and subtraction Basic Facts, particularly linking them using Family of Facts. We will shortly start exploring multiplication and division Basic Facts.

Place Value : Place Value Rap (Rockin' the Standards)

Place Value : Place Value Rap (Rockin' the Standards)

Week Five

We are continuing to work on place value understanding and are now finding numbers 1, 10 and 100 before and after. I have added 2 videos on place value to our blog. The children have enjoyed learning the songs that go with the videos. They are American videos and we have discussed the difference between how they say numbers and how we do. For example they say "Three hundred twenty four" while we say "Three hundred AND twenty four". They also give the commas names between the numbers. The "Thousands comma" and the "Millions comma". I do like the idea of putting the concept of place value to music though.
Remember your comments to our blog are welcome, just click the comments button.

Week Four

Hi everyone,
During week three we have continued to develop our basic fact knowledge through a range of activities, both web based and through classroom games. One group of children broke the 2 minute mark for our addition and subtraction loopy! We have also been exploring numbers up towards one million through place value. It is very important for the children to learn the language of numbers and place value and to see the size of them. Unfortunately I don't have a million popsticks to use! Please take the time to discuss the work we are doing together and give the children the chance to show off their new learning.
I will add some new websites and photos in the next post.
Trevor Saunders

Week Three

Wow, I can't believe how quickly the time seems to be going!
During Week Two of our programme we have continued to work on adding tens and hundreds to numbers.
We have used popsticks to help us with this (see the photos below)

The advantage of using the popsticks is that children get the sense of the "size" of each of the place value colums (The next one up being 10 times bigger). They can also see that the bundle of 100 sticks is made of 10 bundles of 10. This is critical to understanding Place Value.
We have also continued to develop Basic Facts learning. The children have identified which specific ones they need to learn. I encourage Parents and Whanau to work with their children on practicing these.
The enthusiasm of the children is terrific for learning.
Mr Saunders

Our First Week

Hi everyone,
our first week has passed. I am so proud of the way the children have been really focussed on their learning. This week we have been working on Basic Facts and place value in numbers up to 1000. The children have ben using the hundreds boards and thousands books to help support this learning. We have also discussed the importance of learning our addition and subtraction basic facts to 20.
Here are some photos of the children working on Basic Facts.
Have a great weekend everyone.
Trevor Saunders

Week Two Term Three

Hi everyone,
Just a note to let you know that we have had a fantastic start to our Maths groups. The children are excited to be involved and are enjoying the activities we have done so far. I will start adding pictures soon.
I have attached a couple of website links to our blog. Just click on the pictures and they will take you to the site. As the children and I have discussed, it is very important to practice Basic Facts if we want to improve our Maths, so any support from whanau would be a great help.
Most children have returned their permission slips so thanks for that.
We have decided to have a small celebration of learning every 2nd Friday. I am happy to supply the kai for this.
Trevor Saunders

Welcome Children and Whanau

Welcome to our Central Maths Stars Blog. On this site you will be able to follow what we are doing in our special Maths groups. There will be links to games and activities you can do at home to make youself an even better Mathematician. We welcome your comments and encouragement. Just select the comment button at the bottom of each post.
Mr Saunders :)