Meeting held at Comberton Village College
Attended: Ewen
and Barbara (Chesterton), Robyn (Neale-Wade), Jenny, Ian and Rachel (Swavesey),
Deborah and Nick (Longsands), Will and Debbie (Bassingbourn), Simon (Bury St E),
Sarah (Ely), Katie (Bottisham), Vivien (Soham), Sue, Jack, Jess and Mark
(Comberton)
Overview: This was an excellent meeting with lots of
ideas. Thank you to all who
participated.
As usual there had been a curriculum focus suggested in
advance (Number). At the start of the
meeting Mark suggested that rather than merely asking people either to share
materials they had brought or to ask questions, that narrowing the focus to a
single topic might prove to be more useful.
We focused on Standard Index Form for the next hour.
Some files from the meeting are in a zipped file that can
be downloaded from https://dl.dropbox.com/u/9079952/IWB%20-%20Standard%20form%204Dec12.zip
[The contents are likely to need to be extracted before
they can be used. Some are on SMART but
these can, I think, be imported into Activ software.]
Standard Index
Form
1] Using a big
arrow to show the moving of digits/decimal points.
2] A file where
zeroes and different indices are hidden behind white rectangles to allow them
to be moved along together. Which ways
of doing this are most helpful? Eg:
It might be best to start with the ordinary version of the number covered.
3] There is a Standards Box lesson on standard form:
N4.
These lessons can all be downloaded from www.iwbmathstraining.co.uk and are
available for Promethean and for SMART.
The lessons include all of the cards and, as attachments,
all of the other materials for the lessons, including pdfs of the sheets and
teacher notes (for those who have lost pages from the folder!).
Click on Improving
Learning in Mathematics and then select the relevant curriculum area.
4] Videos to show what happens with powers
of ten were shared. It starts with a
picnic. http://www.powersof10.com/
5] Zoomable images are also rather nice,
because these can be paused or zoomed in/out.
One of these is here: http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/
It involves a leaf on a tree in the Florida State
University campus.
Another is the excellent ‘Scale of the Universe’ http://htwins.net/scale2/
This allows for zooming, but also for the standard form
to be turned on/off.
6] NRICH has a task called ‘A question of
scale’. http://nrich.maths.org/6349
There is an opportunity for using some that are known and
then trying to work out others. The
items change each time the task is used.
The ‘marking’ button can be used after each new item is placed to see
whether it is correct.
It was pointed out that some of these are rather
difficult and might put pupils off, so creating a new version on the IWB software
would be an alternative.
7] To demonstrate
that multiplication is commutative,
the different elements can be moved around (it is important to create each
number as a separate object on the board).
9] Because division in standard form needs brackets and is awkward, and for
general understanding, it is often helpful to write these as fractions:
Focus for the next meeting:
It was agreed that a focus like this was very helpful
(not least because a large number of those present had some input).
We brainstormed possibilities for the next meeting and it
was decided that the focus would be:
Alg: expanding brackets, collecting terms, solving
equations with x on both sides.
Venues for the
rest of the year:
Swavesey, Ely and Chesterton all offered to host future
meetings.
Chesterton have got a class set of iPads. As long as the main focus for this group is
still the IWB, people were happy that we would also look at related technology,
such as smartphones and tablets.
Other sharing
Vivien and Sarah shared some ideas that had been
mentioned earlier in the meeting:
Negative Numbers
Using a semi-circle (red) that stands for +1 and a
semi-circle (blue) for -1 it is easy to see that pairs of these make zero. This can then be used to demonstrate
subtraction of negative numbers (amongst other things):
This shows 3 and can help with 3- -2 = 5
Numeracy Games
Roll dice on the board - pupils need to make decisions about
where to put the numbers. There is
always a bin and one number goes in there.
·
Make a three digit number (with a fourth digit
in the bin). Try to get:
o Biggest
o Smallest
o Odd
o Even
·
Three digit added to three digit number - make
the biggest/smallest total
·
Make two fractions where the first is smaller
than the second
·
Make two fractions that are then
multiplied. The closest to 1 wins
