Teaching Time and Money

I've been enjoying being a rep for a new approach to teaching maths in our college over the past year. It follows a framework that is basically reality, abstract, mathematics and reflection/back to reality.

I.
Love.
It.

I had a great mentor come in and take my class for some super fun fraction activities. It was great because he had the kids up and moving around - something we don't always do in math. I had some of my kids who are really struggling in maths understanding fraction concepts and I truly think that is because they are the kinaesthetic learners that need the hands-on reality to be able to relate the math to.

I took some of his ideas and applied them to teaching time, too. I drew a biiiiig clock on the carpet in chalk ("ummmmaaaa" the kids said). I had one child lie down, be the 'hands' and show the analogue time. One child had to draw the matching digital time on the whiteboard and another child had to call out a time.

I did a similar activity but this time on a big whiteboard and the kids stood and showed the time on the clock. Please excuse the horrendous photos. I was rushing...

We looked at money this week too. My mentor made a fantastic point about money and teaching it. We want to teach how much each coin is worth but we can't use the colour or size to do that. In Australia, the 50c coin is the largest but certainly not worth the most. This is a common misconception. Someone he worked with came up with this FANTASTIC idea:

Measuring a coin's worth!
We used a metre ruler, scissors, sticky tape and crepe paper to measure out how many cents each coin was worth.
Why?
The coins' worth became a visual. It was so clear to see which coin was worth the most and which was worth the least. You should have heard the squeals of excitement when they saw how much the $2 coin was worth! Adorable!

The next day I gave them each paper coins. I would call out a coin. Students would then have to buddy up with someone and tell me how much they were worth together. They would then buddy up with another pair and tell me how much their group was worth. You can just keep going! Next week we'll do the same fun activity but I'll tell them they can choose any coin that they'd like. I will then call out an amount, such as $1.25, and they will have to find the correct buddies to make that amount. I'm hoping to see different ways of making that same amount. The kids always go back to their scrapbooks and draw what they did.

I hope you enjoyed my little ramble of ideas.

Do you have any tricks to teaching time and money? Do you get them moving around, too?

Beach Bubble Buddies and a FREEBIE!

I have some new graphics to share with you all!

These cuties I whipped together tonight. Look at their cute pudgy bellies!

In case you missed it, I posted these fun Scrappy Circle Frames last week too - they're free!!

Click on the images to visit either set! I would love to hear what you think :)

Psssst....

I've got a new tab over at my Facebook page for 'Fans Only'. I'm working on a pretty tab picture...Facebook doesn't like me tonight...

At the moment, if you 'like' my page you will get these for FREE:

So if you like freebies, follow my Facebook page to grab these!

FREE Bubble Buddies Graphics

Introducing, Bubble Buddies!

They have cutie little bubble heads so they're my Bubble Buddies!
These little guys are free! Just click on the image above to grab them :)

I would love to hear what you think!

FREE Counting Cookies Clip Art!

Just a quick one!

I just posted a freebie set of cute counting cookies.

Click on the picture above to get your own set. Don't forget to leave some love!

Xx

I've been a busy bee!

I know most of my US peeps are beginning to (if you haven't already) wrap up the end of your school year.

I.
Am.
So.
Jealous.

I have to wait until December for my school year to finish. I'm not even half way!

I have been keeping myself busy though creating some new products! instead of marking assessment pieces and doing report cards

I've put together a couple of spelling resources.

I wanted to have some anchor posters for kids to use when making spelling choices in their writing. I created these posters:

 

 

They are super simple and easy to read, and cute thanks to some amazing graphic artists out there. Seriously, I think I used every single artist known. You should see my credits page...

Another resource I created was some spelling choice boards. Children like having a bit of control over their learning...even if it's only a teensy weensy bit. So, I put together some pages that allow students to choose which spelling activity they would like to do for the day.

The idea is that they colour in/cross off each activity when they've completed it. I would print them onto coloured card, laminate and then they are reusable!

Last, but not least, I've been playing with some more clip art. On my first prac in Uni, I hand drew a bunch of pictures to teach the healthy food pyramid. I decided to have a go at turning some into clip art. This is what I came up with:

 

I would love to give one of them away to 3 people! Just leave a comment below telling me which of the three sets you'd like and I'll throw everyone's comments into the random number generator before I go to bed tonight and get 3 winners!

If you don't win, it's all good! The Balanced Eating Clip Art is 20% off for the next few days.

Congrats Alison, Bec and Jess! Check your emails :)

Fraction action!

I know it's been a while since I posted anything useful so hopefully this will make up for it!

This week we've been looking at fractions. It's early days for my guys. For now, we are focusing on wholes, halves, quarters and eighths.

I've been getting some wonderful advice from a maths guru who is doing some training at our school at the moment. He's really opened my eyes to the importance of linking maths to reality.

I've realised that it is easy for teachers to dive straight into the 'maths' of mathematics (if that makes sense).

When you think of addition, you think '+'.

When you need to teach multiplication you think 'x' and arrays.

What the little ones really need is for maths to make sense to them. They need to be able to link it and see it and experience in some sort of reality. If (when) you do that, you'll start to see that the kids will link the maths that you do teach to reality on their own. It's like their eyes open to the maths around them and you'll start hearing things like "Mum cut my orange into eighths today" or "You can divide our hundred board into half at 50 and quarters at 5".

It's exciting!!!

So, here's some snaps from our fraction action so far:

Our fraction action began with a 'fraction hunt' where we located things in our school and classroom that were either 1 whole part, 2 equal parts, 4 equal parts or 8 equal parts. I printed off some photos and have made a 'Fraction Action' display in our classroom that we are still adding to as we do more activities.

I didn't want to introduce the mathematical language straight away. The focus was connecting to reality.

The next lesson, we represented what we found on our hunt using abstract materials. We glued matchsticks into our scrapbooks and wrote sentences to match them. In another lesson, we used play dough as 'oranges' and made 2, 4 and 8 equal parts.

******

*Side note*

If you follow me on Instagram, you would have already seen this picture that I put up of the MOST AMAZING play dough that I've ever made, EVER!

It is seriously the BEST recipe I've ever used. I got it from here (click on the pic):

Thank you, Anna! It is amazing! I will never use any other recipe. So easy to clean up, too!

******

Back on track again, I then began to introduce the language of halves, quarters an eighths. Some little smarties, of course, already knew these words. This is heading away from the abstraction of the concept and moving towards the actual mathematics that I want them to learn.

We also did some fun games where they had to get into pairs, where they became two parts of one whole. Then one half (one student) had to sit down and one half (the other student) had to sit down.

They then had to join with another pair and became 4 parts of one whole and then joined together with another group of 4 and became 8 parts of one whole. The whole time the kids were using the language of halves, quarters, eighths and wholes.

After that, they went back to their desks and drew pictures of what they did with the game. It was great! It was such an easy way to see which little ones had understood and were using the kinaesthetic activity to draw a representation in their scrapbooks.

We had so much fun! Next week we're going to do some more fun activities.

How do you teach fractions???