The focus of all of the resources on this website is to promote conceptual understanding by starting with context first. This makes them ideal low threshold, high ceiling lessons. Please read the notes below on how to use them. These resources and this idea is new and untested so feedback is welcomed! Please visit the website for more info on how to use these resources. (Some resources are borrowed or adapted from other places - Credit where it's due)
The focus of all of the resources on this website is to promote conceptual understanding by starting with context first. This makes them ideal low threshold, high ceiling lessons. Please read the notes below on how to use them. These resources and this idea is new and untested so feedback is welcomed! Please visit the website for more info on how to use these resources. (Some resources are borrowed or adapted from other places - Credit where it's due)
Topic Intro designed to introduce Year 7 students to careers and real life uses of maths plus its place in their learning journey and other skills that they will be building on.
Topic Intro designed to introduce Year 7 students to careers and real life uses of maths plus its place in their learning journey and other skills that they will be building on.
Topic Intro designed to introduce Year 7 students to careers and real life uses of maths plus its place in their learning journey and other skills that they will be building on.
Topic Intro designed to introduce Year 7 students to careers and real life uses of maths plus its place in their learning journey and other skills that they will be building on.
Topic Intro designed to introduce Year 7 students to careers and real life uses of maths plus its place in their learning journey and other skills that they will be building on.
Topic Intro designed to introduce Year 8 students to careers and real life uses of maths plus its place in their learning journey and other skills that they will be building on.
Topic Intro designed to introduce Year 8 students to careers and real life uses of maths plus its place in their learning journey and other skills that they will be building on.
Topic Intro designed to introduce Year 8 students to careers and real life uses of maths plus its place in their learning journey and other skills that they will be building on.
Topic Intro designed to introduce Year 8 students to careers and real life uses of maths plus its place in their learning journey and other skills that they will be building on.
Topic Intro designed to introduce Year 8 students to careers and real life uses of maths plus its place in their learning journey and other skills that they will be building on.
Topic Intro designed to introduce Year 8 students to careers and real life uses of maths plus its place in their learning journey and other skills that they will be building on.
Topic Intro designed to introduce Year 8 students to careers and real life uses of maths plus its place in their learning journey and other skills that they will be building on.
Topic Intro designed to introduce Year 8 students to careers and real life uses of maths plus its place in their learning journey and other skills that they will be building on.
Topic Intro designed to introduce Year 8 students to careers and real life uses of maths plus its place in their learning journey and other skills that they will be building on.
Topic Intro designed to introduce Year 8 students to careers and real life uses of maths plus its place in their learning journey and other skills that they will be building on.
Topic Intro designed to introduce Year 8 students to careers and real life uses of maths plus its place in their learning journey and other skills that they will be building on.
Topic Intro designed to introduce Year 8 students to careers and real life uses of maths plus its place in their learning journey and other skills that they will be building on.
Topic Intro designed to introduce Year 8 students to careers and real life uses of maths plus its place in their learning journey and other skills that they will be building on.
The ‘Why’: Why does multiplication work the way it does?
This lesson starts with an exercise designed to get students to recognize that multiplication is a way of simplifying repeated addition. It is then followed by a refresher of the commutative and associative laws and why they work.
Similar to the addition and subtraction lessons, this is then split into mental and written techniques. Mental techniques covered include; doubles, using 10’s, hand tricks and partitioning. Students should be reminded that, whilst they may be able to answer quickly and another way, these are good techniques for them to have in their back pockets. The aim is to give a technique for as many time tables as possible. Each slide features an “I do, you do” example, followed by a time trail to see how many students can complete in one minute.
Following this is the written techniques that includes: bar models, grid method, lattice method and lines. Some of these descriptions are slight rewording of popular techniques. Grid method is the method by which the place value of each number is split and put in a table. The lattice method, is similar but features diagonal lines to give two digit answers followed by diagonal addition to give each place value. Lastly, line is the Japanese method of drawing a single line to represent each place value, followed by another line across is and then counting the points at which they cross.
The deliberate decision was made to not include column method as it will likely have been covered in primary and often leads students to an incorrect answer.
Towards the end of the lesson, there are some techniques for decimal multiplication including using similar sums and estimating followed by practice using any method. At the end is a mix of problem solving tasks including worded and spot the mistake problems.
Activities included:
Repeated addition starter
Commutative and associative law refresher
Mental multiplication methods
Written multiplication methods
Decimal Multiplication
Estimating and Using Similar Sums
Mixed Problem solving
The ‘Why’: Why do we use the current number system?
Because Place value is taught to Primary students, many come in to lessons with a working understanding of ‘what’ place value is and ‘how’ it works.
What is often not made clear, is the motivations behind it.
The early part of this lesson gets students to understand that numbers (as we think of them today) are in fact symbols that represent a value and that many other systems existed before this.
It then gets students to understand why it would be inconvenient to have a new symbol for every single number and how handy the positional notation system is.
Some students will go on to ask “Why do we count in tens?”
This leads nicely into talking about different bases and binary as extension.
Activities included:
Number Symbols from the past
Counting systems throughout history
Representing Number activity
Design your own Number system
Where our symbols came from
The History of 10
Positional Notation activity
Problem Solving Questions
Different Bases
Counting in Binary