Creativity with Maths - Part 2

Last week was a very busy week with open day at our school and so could not update on what happened to the idea of fraction games in my class. The games that they came up with were -

Quarter King wheel

Material required- A spinner

Students had to find quarters of the number on which the pointer of the spinner landed. This is a game where two students could play and the person who had game the most answers was the winner.

Thundering thirds

Material required: A spinner

Two contenders were required to play this game. The contenders had to be very good with finding thirds of the number. The one who gave the most answers was the winner. Students working on this game needed to find their numbers that could be divided into thirds. 

Four fractions 

Material required - Each player needed 10 counters. Counters of the two players needed to be of different colours.

This was is the game where the players had to choose a question and then answer it. The questions that were laminated were like - What is a quarter of 24? What is the half of 30? If a player knew the correct answer, he/she got to put a counter on the square that has the answer.

Fraction Ladders

Material required : four counters and a dice. If the dice landed on an even number then the player got to play and had to find quarters and halves of the numbers on the ladder. each player needed to complete two ladders. The winner was the one who completed the half and a quarter ladder first.

Students enjoyed trialling these games and felt that they needed to make some amendments to the rules and the numbers printed on the board games. 

I will update you on it in my next post, next week.
To be continued...

Understanding fractions

Last week I attended the Maths Lead Teacher's meeting. It was run by both Sue and Ann. It was very informative, challenging and packed with activities that we can do with our students in class. 

One of the activities that I liked was an activity on fractions. We were given twenty blocks each and an A4 coloured paper. Then Ann started giving us problems to solve...

She gave us problems that were somewhat like..

If 4 is a quarter, show me a whole; if 9 is one and a half, show me  three and a half and so on.  I must admit that some of the problems were grappling. We did this individually at the PLD but for the purpose of my class I paired by students.  I gave them enough wait time to think about the problems. Check out the use of equipment and visual representations of their problem solving.

First the students could not understand what they were asked. But I had decided that I would not give them hints and so kept encouraging them to understand the language of maths in the question and then try to solve it. I gave them enough wait time.  Finally one child shared his understanding. It was an correct answer. I asked him to share his working with the rest of the class on the board. This was an Aha!! moment for the others. They all solved their problems in their pairs and then took the initiative to help out those who did not get it.  It was a very rewarding lesson and all students enjoyed doing it. The activity definitely made the understanding of fractions clearer and easier.

Finding Fractions of a Region - Language of Maths

After doing two weeks of fractions in my class I felt that most students in the class would be comfortable halving and quartering fractions of a region. So I decided to work with my students who are achieving low in Maths.


To my surprise, none of the five students could show me the different ways we could share a cake into quarters. I felt very disappointed.

The question that I gave them was this:

I also gave them a square piece of paper that they could experiment to work out quarters. But somehow it did not seem to work. None of students seemed confident to ask questions or talk about their thinking.

As I started to explain the problem I realised that my students did not have the language to participate in a discussion. So I stopped teaching to the plan and decided to expose my students to the language that was required to participate in a discussion. I used think boards so that each child could record their understanding.

After remembering, repeating and discussing the question a number of times, the students had the words to explain their understanding.

Tomorrow I will be giving an different problem on quarters to the same group of students and hopefully they will understand and be able to solve the problem.

Today instead of giving another problem to the same group, I made them experts and they had to share their learning in a group.  All the students explained and demonstrated the different ways they could share a cake in quarters. They did it beautifully and that was because they had the language to explain their thinking. It built their confidence and left them motivated towards their learning.

In future I will make sure that each child in the class has the words to explain their thinking. It becomes all the more important when most of my students have english as their second language.

Getting them Motivated

Maths has become one of the favourite subjects of my students. They are happy to do Maths for a whole block and this is because they have experienced success in this subject. Maths is like addiction. Once you get it, you want to do more. However I have a few students who are not so good at Maths and feel a little bit discouraged because they are not the first ones to solve the problem. I needed to somehow get them motivated to solve problems. So I got this group on the mat for the whole block and started by what they could do. Our topic of discussion was Fractions.
We have been asked to start with a big problem which always got these students confused... so to get them going I started with very easy problems so that they could get motivated. The problems that I gave them were as easy as...
"Show me quarter of 8"
Students worked in groups and were given white boards and play dough to show their working out.
slowly they got what was meant by quarter and sixths and eighths...

Then I gave them the hard problems that I would normally launch to the whole class. The question that I gave is...

Everyone in the group got it.  This group further went on to make their own problems and not only shared them with the class to solve but also helped those who got an incorrect answer.

And they chose not to use equipment any more.

                                                                What a delight!!


                                                            MY REFLECTION

Sometimes it is important to show students what they can do to build up their self esteem.
I am a very happy teacher to see my students intrinsically motivated. Harder problems may throw a spanner in the wheels!