Maths Talk

Today, the Squares Group were working on sharing their Maths strategies. 

They started by trying to work out the multiplication or division problem given to them with a buddy. Some of them used materials (fingers and beans) and some tried to do it in their mind (jedi powers). 

After that, they had to write down their strategy (the way they worked it out). The hardest part about the whole thing was using their words to describe in detail HOW they had come to that conclusion. The actual answer's were 'easy' (according to them).

Here are two videos of them sharing their strategy. 

Mrs Turner thinks they did pretty well considering this video app was new and it was strange sharing to a screen. 

Do you have any tips for us to improve? If you do please leave them in the comments below. (Remember to be nice - we are still learning!)

Carlos and Sophie

James and Simeng

Let's Talk Math Strategy

In Team 15 we are learning about the importance of explaining our mathematical thinking. Yesterday we were given a word problem to solve. Mrs Turner didn't even care if we got the answer wrong as long as we could explain how we worked it out. 

First we learned how to breakdown a question (Look for the key words and numbers and figure out what it is asking us to do).  We identified that the key word was 'ate'. This meant it was a Subtraction problem. 

Did you know LOT'S of other words mean the same as subtract? - takeaway, minus, loose, lost, ate, gave away! (if you can think of more, post one in the comments section)

For some of us, the problem was REALLY easy. For some of us, it was REALLY hard. Even our best mathematicians though, were in the learning pit for a while trying to think of the best way to explain their thinking.

To solve the problem, some of us drew pictures of cupcakes and crossed them out as we counted. A couple of us spotted a 'magic 10', but most of us just counted backwards from the biggest number. All of these are perfect strategies to use. We are very proud!

These 3 brave, amazing people volunteered to share their strategy on camera. Can you give us some feedback in the comments? We think Chloe did particularly well with her explaining how/why she used the numbers. What do you think?

Tu Meke!