Padlet & Number Talks

Last week, I carried out a Number Talk with my class and needed some of the responses to use at an event with parents. While thinking of a way of capturing the childrens' work (photocopy whiteboards, run around with a camera etc.), an idea came to me. Children carry out their Number Talk as usual, but instead of vocalising their answers and methods, we'd upload them to a Padlet wall. 

If you've not come across Number Talks before, this may be a useful starting point. In brief, the teacher poses a question, that the children answer. Children share their answers and then, in turn, explain how they got to their answer. A range of methods are shown, misconceptions addressed and discussions held. 

Here's what I did:

- I set up a Padlet wall (http://padlet.com/Murphy/5den0yclatx);

- I posed the following question: 236 - 199;

- children calculated the answer using their chosen mental or written strategy;

- children uploaded an anonymous answer to the Padlet wall.

I then projected the responses and, in turn, we looked at each answer and the method used to arrive at that answer. The anonymous responses allowed a slightly more blunt discussion about the methods used, but naming responses would also have benefits.  

There you go, another post about maths and another that involves Padlet!

Math Duel League

In 2014, Lee Parkinson wrote an iBook to share ideas for iPad device use during the Football World Cup. This blog post builds upon one of Lee's ideas in that book. Incidentally, all of Lee's books are very useful (for both Apple and Android devices) and can be found both here and here. 

 Image credit: Lee Parkinson

In the book '15 iPad Lessons for the World Cup' Lee outlined an idea for using the Math Duel app in class to improve maths skills through a bit of healthy competition. This year, I plan to build upon this with the Math Duel League...

This is an idea I've been playing around with for a while and hope will work. I imagine it'll take a bit of tinkering with, and as I do, I'll update this post. As I'm writing the post before trying it out, any suggestions others have are most welcome.

We're in school for thirty odd weeks during the year and I have thirty children in my class. This is where the idea started. How about each child playing another child each week through the year and then, at the end of the year, have a completed league table. 

- Each child must play each other child 'home' and 'away' during the year. A copy of the class list for each child to tick off as they go will be useful for this.

- 'Home' is the child sat in their usual class seat. The 'away' child moves to sit with them. The child at 'home' inputs the settings (there needs to be a fair play agreement here). They then play their game.

- On Google Drive, there'll be a spreadsheet for children to input results into and the table can be created from this. The children will be able to access the Google Drive document from the iPad device once their game has finished. 

My main concern using thinking about this has been about the children who may finish bottom of the league. I'll not share the whole league table with the class. The 'home' and 'away' and the 'home child' being in charge of the settings should enable all children to win some games. Another thought was about handicaps based upon head starts or giving children certain times tables to work on. 

Image Credit: Ellie's Games

Math Duel is available for both Apple and Android devices.

I'll give it a go and see how it goes...

'We Make Use of...' Mathletics

Image credit: www.3plearning.com

We've been using Mathletics for about six years now. Initially, it provided a quick and easy way to direct children towards online activities.

However, it's much more powerful than that and is being improved all the time. There are no doubt parts of the site we are yet to find or utilise fully. The 'Live Maths', which is no doubt the area that children are drawn to initially, is ideal to get children to practise mental arithmetic as it involves competing against anonymous peers - sometimes in class, but often outside of the classroom. Children are engaged by this and enjoy competing against other children from around the world. A lesser known aspect of this, is the ability to change the level at which children are working to make the mental questions harder.

For home learning, we're able to set tasks that link to what has been taught in class and that children must complete before they can take part in any other part of Mathletics. Afterwards, the score the child achieved is logged and can be viewed by the teacher. Some teaching can then take place and the children can even retake the activity to see if their understanding of it has improved. There is a wide range of topic areas and children have the ability to self-differentiate by choosing or harder tasks from within the topic area.

We are increasingly making use of this website to provide personalised learning tasks in the home. As we adapt to assessment without levels and integrate the mastery curriculum, many schools are assessing children based on statements of mathematical skill. Mathletics provides an excellent tool for developing curricula based on these statements through the setting up of personalised programmes. Teachers can create a programme made up of the different statements and drag relevant activities into it making a personalised programme, which children can work on independently at home. The great thing is that  many, if not all, of the activities come with tutorial videos to help parents and children. We had two set programmes used in Year Six at a working towards Level 4 and working towards Level 5 and, by assessing which areas children needed most practise, we were able to target home learning at areas that the children needed most. The setting up of the programmes take time, but if several people are working on them this is not only simple, it is also a tool which can be used across the school and for some time to come.

Times Tables Toons are a range of music videos which encourage children to chant their multiplication facts. They are a little cheesy, but certainly catchy enough even if they are discrete from associated division facts. 

There are various different certificates that can be achieved by children working with Mathletics. We hand these out in class (Bronze), in year group assemblies (Silver) and whole school assemblies (Gold). This recognises the achievements of those receiving the award and encourages others to also work towards the certificates.

Note: We have written this post as a result of using this website in our classrooms. We have not been asked or paid to write. We are often approached to write posts, but have and will continue to only write about what we have done in our classrooms. We're two full-time class teachers choosing to blog about our experiences.

Estimation Part II

Previously we looked at one of the ideas we are using topromote the skill of estimating in children including a link to the website www.estimation180.com set up by a teacher called Andrew Stadel. In this entry, we are going to share some of things we have done to further promote estimating with our children.

The importance of estimation was first raised when we read Jo Boaler’s thought-provoking book ‘The Elephant in the Classroom’. Throughout the book, the author reiterates the importance of estimating as a skill for all mathematicians. Armed with this suggestion, we looked at the children in our maths classes and noticed that many of them found it hard to use estimating to help them check answers, use common sense to identify solutions or to support their problem solving.

In order to develop estimation, we developed two immediate solutions. The first was to set up an estimating display within the class. Similar to the previous post, this was an image next to a whiteboard so that children are able to put their suggestions near the picture.

So far, we have used images of Minecraft buildings, football stadiums and even a picture of a tub full of baked beans. Purposefully we make it clear that there we do not have an accurate answer and instead encourage children to go through a process of estimating the correct answer.

Estimate how many blocks were used to make this castle.

At the same time as developing this display, we also discovered the fabulous www.estimation180.com website. The author of this incredibly useful website has created an archive of a vast number of images from which children can make estimations. The truly brilliant thing about the website is that many of the images are linked over a range of days so children, as part of a process of estimation, can build on the information they have found over previous days. Coupled with this, each page has a range of questions on such as ‘what would be a low estimate?’ or ‘what would be a high estimate?’. The author also always provides an answer either with a photo or a video.

By making regular use of this website and the questions, we have developed with the children a process of using estimation in their maths:

•  What is a low estimate? – developed into – What is a low estimate that is close to the correct answer?
•  What is a high estimate? – developed into – What is a high estimate that is close to the correct answer?
• Make your estimate.

A photo from the website is often the image that children work from at the start of the lesson as a basis for a quick mathematical discussion to start the lesson. At the start of the year, my favourite section of the website to use starts with toilet paper as it is something children are able to relate to straight away.

How many sheets on the roll of toilet paper?

It is worth noting that many of the measurements are American, but have linked metric measurements as well.