Puzzle Games in Maths

As part of a recent problem solving week, we decided to use a puzzle video game as an introductory element to our maths lessons.

The Professor Layton games are available on Nintendo DS and 3DS and each game consists of an extensive range of puzzles within a mystery story to be solved by the character of Professor Layton. This, coupled with the fact that there are six games within the franchise, means that there are a vast amount of puzzles to choose from. The fact that these are available on the Nintendo DS means that you can make use of a visualiser to project the game onto the big screen. Alternatively, there are many websites on the web which have images of the puzzles which can be used to create paper copies of the puzzles.

The puzzles themselves are incredibly diverse, both in terms of the skills needed to solve them and in the level of difficulty. Over a series of lessons, you can cover a wide range of problem solving skills and target all levels within your classroom. In case you do not want to go to the trouble of solving the puzzles, there are many websites with solutions.

The children were motivated by the puzzles within the class in part because of the high quality delivery of the game, the fact that solving them moves you along in the game with a reward and because the puzzles are designed to be accessible to a range of people. There were several times when children announced that the puzzle was 'impossible'. It was an excellent opportunity to take children through problem solving strategies as you work together towards a solution. Many children asked if there was a way of taking the puzzle home to show parents and others.

There are, of course, many different puzzle games available across all sorts of formats, but these are favourites of ours. We will certainly be continuing to use these puzzles to inspire problem solving in the classroom.

Why Bother?

Why bother? Why bother to blog, to Tweet, to Pin?

We are teachers, we enjoy seeing others learn, daily. It's what we do, it's what we enjoy. So, helping others to learn, people doing the same job, is just as rewarding. Hearing back from others about the ideas we've shared here and how they've been used is rewarding. It reaffirms the belief that we're doing the right thing. We share a Google Doc and visitors come - awesome. We post a Tweet and one person, just one, ReTweets it - excellent. Someone comments on a blog post, "Really like this" - fantastic. 

We're busy; books to mark, lessons to plan, clubs to run, meetings to attend, whilst also seeing family, friends and generally living.

We don't earn money from this.

We share ideas here. We read blog posts elsewhere. We're allowing others to learn from us, just like we're befitting from the blogs written by others. If we do something outstanding* in our classroom and tell no one, 30 children benefit. If we write about it here, there's the possibility that the whole world could benefit. That's an amazing thought.

At the time of writing, just under 100,000 visits to this blog have been registered in its first 26 months of existence. We have hundreds of Pins on Pinterest, Likes on Facebook and Circles on Google+. Videos on YouTube.

So, should you join Twitter? Yes. Use Facebook professionally? If you want. Look at Pinterest? At least take a look. Start a blog? It's daunting, read some others, give it a go.

As already said:

We are teachers, we enjoy seeing others learn, daily. It's what we do, it's what we enjoy. So, helping others to learn, people doing the same job, is just as rewarding.

*Technical vocabulary for 'good' or 'engaging'.

Apps for Your Primary Classroom The Fifth (The Augmented Chronicles)

So, our fifth post about apps. This one's not just all the newest ones we've found, it's all the new augmented reality apps we've been playing (learning) with. See our other app based blog posts by clicking on The 'app' label at the bottom of this post.

Image credit: www.apple.com

These apps also appear on some of our other posts. We thought it might be useful to have them all listed together too:

AR Flashcards 
AR Flashcards Space

Atlas

ColAR Mix
My Dragon Toy
String
Zooburst

SkyView Free
Spacecraft 3D
Space AR 

Space Journey
Star & Planet Finder

Walking with Dinosaurs

Again, if you have any we don't know about then please let us know.

Apps for Your Primary Classroom IV

This post is a follow up to our previous posts about apps for primary education: 

Image credit: www.apple.com

These apps have all been used by us in our Key Stage Two classroom. Although this list links to the iTunes Store many of these apps are also available on other operating systems too:

LITERACY

AR Flashcards
Cambugs 1 

Chicktionary 
ColAR Mix

Opposites

Shake-a-Phrase

MATHS

Addimals 
Geometry Pad 
Geo Board

King of Maths
Math Dictionary for Kids 
Math Museum

Math Town

Math Opps

Math Zombies
Number Pieces 
Number Rack

Pick-a-Path
Pop Math

Quento

QuickMath+

MUSIC

Figure

MyOrchestraApp 

PROGRAMMING

Atlas
GamePress 

Hopscotch

OBOTO

SketchNation

PUZZLE

BlockPath

Dots

Ending 

Interlocked

Where's My Water

Where's My Water 2

SCIENCE

EarthNow

SkyView Free
Spacecraft 3D
Space AR 

Space Journey

If we've missed any that you use please let us know!

Padlet Your Thinking

After reading a blog post by @SwayGrantham about her implementation of iPad devices I decided to give one of her ideas a go. This would work on any internet enabled device.

In maths, we spent two days working on a real life investigation looking as redesigning the school's garden. The task was the culmination of our work about 2D shapes and their properties.

Image credit: Padlet.com

I set up a Padlet wall and asked the children to post ideas, thoughts, help, suggestions and photos onto the Padlet wall for others around the classroom to see. The wall can be found here. The children completed the task, whilst sharing their knowledge and learning from each other. It's also created a good digital record of the lesson.

Create Your Own Word Banks

We've written before about Google Forms and how it can be used to generate vocabulary. This time we didn't rely on the kind people of Twitter, parents or colleagues to generate the words, we handed that over to our children. 

We provided them with these two links:

Bossy Verbs

 and

Interesting Adverbs

The children entered up to 10 words each. This generated over 1,000 words for each and we then made the result into word clouds to use during our instructional writing: 

Words for the children to use, by the children who will use them...

What is It?

Firstly, this is not our idea. It's stolen, er sorry, 'magpied'. So, if Sarah is reading this, yes we listened during your staff meeting, yes we liked your idea and yes, now we're blogging about it so the country, continent and wider universe can find out about your idea too...

Below is an example that could be used for a history lesson. We've adapted this for a geography lesson about map knowledge too, but it can be adapted for any subject and age group. The idea is to show different parts of a picture or object 3 or 4 times and ask the children to work out what is being shown.

For example, the wives of Henry VIII:

Firstly, showing shoulders, then hands, followed by eyes and so on. Children make predictions, based upon previous knowledge and think about how their predictions change as they see more and more detail. So, hence forth and give it a go. Oh and thanks again Sarah, if you're reading.