Mathematics lessons

The other day in class we had a lot of fun because we learned how to teach Maths in English, but we played the role of children. First of all, the teacher showed us a song with numbers which is about a fish and we can use it, if we lose the control of our class. You can see the song in the link below and I’m sure you will want to practice it with your students because it is very easy to learn and we can use gestures to teach it.

Then, our teacher told us about a very useful resource that we can employ in our classes in mathematics. This material is known as ten frames and it consists on a two-by-five rectangular frames into which counters are placed to illustrate numbers less, than or equal to ten. From my point of view, I believe it can be very useful to prompt different mental images of numbers and mental strategies for manipulating these numbers, all in association with the numbers’ relationship to ten. For instance, with the little ones, we can start sticking some apples or points and children can count them and we can take one out or add, so they can practice addition and subtraction. We can also make a dictation and our pupils in pairs can stick some stickers in the squares or do it all together like in the image on the left. I firmly believe children may like this methodology because it is very dynamic and they will see it as a game.

But we also have other possibilities to work on Maths mentally and I will try to summarize some of them in the following list:

–  Children count to 15 but every 5 numbers instead of saying the name of the number, they have to say “banana” and the one who fails, He/she has to stand up. They can count on twos, fives, tens and so on.
– Saying the number backwards.
– Asking the highest / smallest number in different sets (we can write the sets on the blackboard and delete them fast).
– We can say a number and ask children, which comes before or after.
– We can also say two numbers and let them say the one in the middle.
– Rounding the number to the nearest ten or hundred.
– Saying additions, subtractions, multiplications or divisions and  they have to write the result in a grid (depending on the age of our students, the level of difficulty will increase).
– Saying short problems that can be calculated mentally and children have to write down the result (the number and the name, for example, eleven days, three apples, etc.) In Catalan this is also known as “Quinzet”.

As far as I’m concerned, I believe  these activities can be very useful for children, not only to learn the numbers, but also to gain mental agility when having to do operations. Moreover, we can play it as a game, asking each student in a round. However, we must bear in mind that each child has his own learning pace and, therefore, there will be kids who will find it easier and others who will show more difficulties. In addition, we need to take into account the diversity, so in case we have dyslexic children what we can do is leave a copy with the results on their table so they can follow the operations and not get lost.

However, I think that for carrying out the activities we must know basic vocabulary expressions related to mental calculation. For that reason, to make it easier I decided to create a list with some of the ones we can use. Keep it as a treasure!

• Take  out, take away, minus= treure.
• Plus= afegir.
•  Multiplied by, times= multiplicat per.
• Divided by= dividit entre.
• An addition=  una suma.
• A substraction=  una resta.
• A multiplication= una multiplicació.
• A division= una divisió.
• Which turn is it? = a qui li toca?
• I’m going to repeat it three times= Ho repetiré tres cops.
• If you got right, put a tick= si ho has fet bé posa’t un tick
• If you got wrong, put a cross and copy below it= si ho has fet malament posa’t una creu i copia-ho a sota.
• You have to count your ticks= Heu de contar els vostres ticks.
• I got ten out of ten (10/10)= Jo he fet bé 10 de 10.
• I made a mistake= vaig fer un error.
• I didn’t listen properly= no vaig escoltar correctament.
• How do you write/spell it in English? = com ho escrius o ho lletreges en anglès?

I hope you have learned a lot from this post, as much as I have, and I encourage you to practice mental Maths skills, to have an agile and strong brain!!