The Country Teacher
Blogging about teaching, teaching products/resources that make preparing lessons 10x easier!
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I love when it comes time to learn about patterns. Patterns are such a fun and exciting math topic but also an important focus in the early stages of the development of algebraic thinking. Patterns in algebra falls into two broad categories: repeating patterns and growth patterns. When learning about repeating patterns, I love to get out lots of concrete materials e.g. shape blocks, unifix cubes, paddle pop sticks, toothpicks, counters, coloured pencils etc. I think it’s really important for children to have those concrete materials to manipulate when continuing or creating a repeating or growth pattern.
Place value is such an important concept for students to learn. It is the foundation for them to gain an understanding about addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. One activity I love to do with my students every year when teaching about place value is a place value scavenger hunt. All you need for this activity is some magazines or cataglogues that students can cut. I give them a template with instructions on numbers they need to find in the magazines for e.g. ‘find a number with a 5 in the ones place’. Students use their understanding of place value to search for a number in the magazines that has a 5 in the ones place – 35, 465, 15. Read more…
