It’s been a short week for the pupils but once again we’ve managed to pack in loads of learning and fun!
In maths this week we’ve been connecting the work we did on patterns with the work we’ve been doing on developing a deeper understanding of two types of addition (adding together and adding more). To develop our discussion skills we’ve been trying to convince others, or be convinced by others, of a different point of view by giving reasons for our answers. We’ve also been learning to ask questions about things we are unsure about. We’re gradually building up our mathematical vocabulary too with words like equation, expression and addend.
We found all sorts of ways to group the expressions below by thinking about different patterns and relationships. Noticing and explaining these patterns and relationships will help us better understand these maths facts so we can use them to solve other more challenging problems.
– Some grouped expressions that all had the same value e.g. all have a value of 5, 6, 8 or 10
– Some grouped expressions where one of the addends was the same each time e.g. these all have a 1 in.
– Some commented on the growing patterns they noticed e.g. 1 + 2, 1 + 3, 1 + 4 and were able to explain that the number that changes grows by 1 each time.
– Some of us started to use the word addend in our explanations: “In the expressions at the top, the second addend is always the same. In the expressions at the bottom the first addend is always the same.”
– Some noticed pairs of expressions that have the same addends but the opposite way around. We’ll explore this in more detail in the coming weeks and months.
– Some of us even started asking questions about things that didn’t seem to fit our patterns and thinking about why these broke the patterns.
In literacy we’ve been working hard on using description in our writing and creating our own ‘That’s not my…’ books. Because the books are touch-and-feel type books, we had to find materials to match our descriptions which helped us understand more about different describing words, particularly textures. This week we managed to finish our books and we joined the P1s for their library slot so that we could share our stories with them. Our creations included, “That’s not my giraffe”, “That’s not my monster”, and “That’s not my capybara” to name a few.
We also had a chance to get to know more about our class mates by sharing our “All About Me” posters that we created as part of our homework.
