For those of you (like Sylvia) who are looking to find the Prescribed Learning Outcomes (PLOs) and Achievement Indicators for the new math curriculum related to your particular grade level, here they are!  🙂 You can print off the whole package (K-7) or just the grade(s) you teach.

ministry of education – math irps

Carole

Here is a post for Hilde and friends…  

I promised to send along my powerpoint slide with the animations to show how the multiplication chart is full of patterns – and how learning strategies for mastering the facts makes it manageable. 

hope it’s helpful.

demystifying the multiplication chart powerpoint

Here’s a game we played today in grade 7, to practice and apply the notion of order of operations – that when you have a string of operations to perform, it matters in what order you apply those operations.  It’s a bowling game. The goal of the game is to “knock down” as many of the 10 bowling pins as you can, by creating number sentences from 3 digits rolled at random by the kids.  Students can use any operation, even exponents and brackets to create a true statement for each of the numbers.  This is a fun and engaging game – and students will work hard to practice and apply their understandings of “BEDMAS” or “PEDMAS” to get a “strike”… We did today – knocking down all ten pins with equations created with only the digits 1, 2 and 5!

order-of-operations-bowling-game

The game comes from Marilyn Burns’ website (www.mathsolutions.com) where she features sample lessons drawn from her extensive collection of teacher resource books – all free.  The tasks range from k-8 or 9 and are conceptual and fun.  Check them out at her site: Lessons from the Classroom

Enjoy!

Carole

Doesn’t SOUND like a math post, does it?  Except that I have shown this stuff off at so many workshops lately and feel compelled to share what this extremely useful tape looks like….

I have been buying Modern Craft Magnetic Tape on a tape dispenser at my local dollar store (Richmond, BC).  I stick it onto the back of all sorts of printed images (penguins, lips, red and yellow apples…) to model children’s solutions to open-ended math problems.  When a child tells me that there were 13 apples in a bag, and that 6 of them were yellow and 7 were red, I like to be able to model that solution so we can “check it” as a class.  Using magnetic tape on the back of a simple image (clip art is magic…) allows children to move the pictures and re-create their thinking on the white board in front of their peers in a representation all can understand – and see – from the back of the room!

Carole

Wow… I LOVE working with you folks.  🙂

OK – I am taking care of my to do list… Here is the stuff I promised you.

The labels for the wooden dice are here, so you can play “tens and ones” on the hundreds chart:  

tens-and-ones-dice-labels3

ten-and-ones-game

The instructions – and game cards – for the game “Get to a 100” are here:

get-to-100-instructions

get-to-100-number-cards

I know I promised you more, but I can”t remember what!!  eek!  send me a message here if YOU remember what I cannot right now…

Carole

oooo – This one’s tricky!  Just ask the students at Whitehorse Elementary!

Get your students to cut apart the number cards (digits ranging from -3 to +5) and have them place them in the magic square cells so that each column, row and diagonal has the same sum.  

What’s the sum? Well, there are MANY ways to do this puzzle, so that’s negotiable!  This is best done in partners, since two brains are better than one…

A hint?  

Order your digit cards.  What do you notice about the number in the middle?

Does that help??

🙂

enjoy!

integer-magic-square

Carole

These conceptual games will get your youngest learners thinking and talking about math… Consider them as centres ideas – ways to explore number sense in an engaging manner.

more-or-less1
concentration
compare-and-order
build-it1
number-3-ways-five-frame1
number-3-ways1

It’s hard to find a lot of on-line links for K students. Most are too complex or are overly focussed on the digits in isolation. I did manage to find 2 last evening that I wanted to share:

<a
fishy count
A game of counting and matching to numerals…

and

moon cakes
A game aimed at subitizing – and putting quantities in order. Tricky, but important!
Carole

Voilà ma collection de jeux de maths en français. Souvenez-vous que c’est comme ça que les enfants doivent pratiquer leurs faits, que c’est comme a qu’ils vont maîtriser ces concepts essentiels…

Allez jouez!

cercles-et-etoiles
ah-non-20
ah-non-20-instructions
roulez-et-biffez
plus-ou-moins
mettez-les-en-ordre
number-3-ways-french-5
number-3-ways-french

Here are some fun on-line applets for adding and subtracting integers, using 2 different models (number lines and colour tiles). The last is a game for 2 players to play on line, a version of Connect 4.

number line
colour tile addition
colour tile subtraction
connect 4 – integer style!

Hello all! 🙂

Here are some games that we have been playing lately to develop number sense. The first is called “Oh No! 20!”. It’s from Marilyn Burns, and works on fluency with addition and subtraction – but more importantly it’s a strategy game, so children (and adults) of all ages like it! Take a regular deck of cards and remove the 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. The goal is to force your partner to get to – or go over – 20 as a sum. The instructions for the game can be found by clicking on this link: oh-no-20 (there are 2 pages!). For the French version, click here.

Another game we have been playing is called “High Roller“. It’s a dice game for operational fluency that’s easy to adapt for different grade levels simply by changing the dice from a regular 6-sided one to one with 10 sides. The instructions are here: high-roller For the french version, click here!

Carole

I found a really neat little applet tonight. It asks kids to work with cubes to make both sides of a pan balance equivalent. The visual is effective – different from the number balances we have used in our district, it shows blocks snapped together in different configurations that you use to make the scale balance. Once you have tried a combination of blocks, the computer translates your move into a number sentence, and shows whether you have balanced the scale or not. This is a great way to visually model equality and inequality for grades 1 and 2 students!

Click here to try the game!

Enjoy!

Here is my new favourite series of on-line games to practice counting, comparing and the make tens strategy at early primary. It’s from Illuminations. The game interacts with kids, even reading the instructions. There are several levels of play and several ways to address concepts included. Try having children take a screen shot (shift+command+3 on a Mac) to save their favourite game or “best thinking” – a great way to archive a student sample for portfolios! Open the Ten Frame Game by clicking on the link!
Carole

I have been meaning to mention this book here for a while… It’s called Jayden’s Rescue by Vladimir Tumanov, and it follows three friends on a quest to save princess Jayden who is being held captive by an evil wizard. The wizard throws out mathematical problems and puzzles to the three friends who must solve them in order to proceed along their journey. Each of the children shared their solution strategy – which makes it a perfect model for problem-solving at the intermediate level.

I have taken the problems from Jayden’s Rescue and retyped them so they can be shared with your students while you read the novel. If you use an overhead projector, they make an ideal text to do think alouds, marking up the text while you as teacher think through the math on the page.

The book is available through Scholastic…

Enjoy!

Hello West Van! Thank you for working with me this morning to deepen your understanding of the PLOs around Math.

I promised that I would send you the links to some of the cool weblinks I found courtesy of the BBC’s Numeracy initiative called “Maths File“. You will find connections to the new Math IRP in the games, hosted by Hypatia and Pythagoras for intermediate aged kids. You’ll need a ShockWave plug-in to operate the games, and FireFox works best for my Mac friends… There are some very clever things here, including: “Late Delivery” a game for grades 6 & 7 Algebra and “Saloon Snap” a game for finding fraction and decimal equivalents. Check out “Builder Ted” as well, for a game aimed at ordering decimal numbers.

Carole

I love the story “Two of Everything” by Lily Toy Hong. It tells the story of a poor couple who are blessed to find a magic pot n their garden – and describes the hilarious situation they find themselves in! It creates a beautiful and engaging context for talking to children about patterns in tables and charts, and more specifically the relationships within input output machines, since the pot doubles everything that falls into it.

My thanks to Chris Marin of Richmond who took the time to translate this amazing traditional tale into French for use in immersion Math classrooms! Her version of the story can be downloaded by clicking on this link: two of everything in french.

Enjoy, and merci, Chris!!!
Carole

I wanted to send you some of the pieces I promised throughout the day today.
First, the giant-ten-frames – so you can play “Salut!” on your foreheads… 🙂 The coloured ten frames that I use on the overhead projector can be found by clicking here. 2-colour-ten-frames

The link to english correlations of Math Makes Sense and the new Math curriculum can be found here: http://www.matza.org/ataglance/

The single grades French correlations for Chenelière and the new curriculum are available for download by clicking on this link.

The combined grades for French (Chenelière) can be found here.

The Math Tool Kits and games in French can be found here…

Oh – and the we played today, called “Roulez et Biffez” are available by clicking on the image to the right…

Enjoy!
If there’s anything I have forgotten, please let me know…

Hello to all the folks who hung out with me today. What a treat to meet with such a fun-loving group! AS promised I wanted to share a couple of things with you, namely the poem “Two Friends”, which I have pasted below, and the instructions for the game called “Oh No! 20!” that I modeled for you this afternoon.

I hope that your fall is successful and happy…
All the best,
Carole

Salut to the teachers at Duncan Elementary!  🙂

I wanted to send along the link to the correlations between the current Math Makes Sense and Chenelière resources and the new WNCP K-7 Math curriculum being implemented this fall.  These downloadable materials have been put together by the Vancouver Island Numeracy Network, in particular Bev Ferster (all hail Bev!) to support teachers in using their resources within the new WNCP curriculum guidelines.  You can access english and immersion support documents for single grades, combined grades and multi-age groupings.  Go to the site by clicking here…!
Now go outside!  8)