The Grid Challenge

Saw a Tweet earlier this week:

Absolutely unbelievable scenes as Sarah in Year 6 takes this down in 8 and a half minutes pic.twitter.com/wk2Z8cCXl8

— Ashley Booth (@MrBoothY6) February 13, 2017

Wow. Didn't the child do well. And, we really liked the look of the task, so we set about making some of our own. Our class have really enjoyed trying to solve them since. We made an Excel document for creating them and extended it over the four operations. 

At the time of writing, we've used multiplication and addition grids with our class. Not sure how useful the subtraction and division versions will be, but they're there if needed.

Find the resources here. Hope it's useful.

Kung Fu Maths

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Kung Fu Maths is a practical maths activity for reinforcing mathematical vocabulary. It can be carried out in a classroom or outside, standing up or sitting down. 

Firstly, it involves four actions:

• Arms crossed, one horizontal and the other vertical represents addition.
• One arm placed horizontally represents subtraction.
• Arms crossed diagonally are for multiplication.
• Finally, one arm placed horizontally and then the other arm ‘punching’ once above and once below shows division.

The way I have used this is to reinforce mathematical vocabulary. I say a question to the class, for example, “What is the product of 2 and 3?” The class then respond by showing the correct sign, in this case arms crossed diagonally and call back the answer (6).

It’s a nice lesson start or end to a lesson, or even in the middle!