Fun Maths Assessment

I created this assessment sheet last year to see how well the children could remember what 'radius' and 'diameter' meant, after doing some work with circles. I also wanted to see them use exact measurements with a ruler, in both centimetres and millimetres, and apply the Habits of Mind Persisting & Striving for Accuracy. They all enjoyed using the compasses too, and for many of them it was the first time they had tried, so I am pretty impressed with the results.
The task was devised after I saw another really awesome idea on pinterest.

The assessment sheet / instructions. I probably should add in a bit for them to fill in about what they did well, and what they would change next time, and a space for my comment too.

Scrapbooks and Gloss Testing

After meeting with Dianne (quite some time ago sorry!) and discussing where to next, I decided that it would be ok to really challenge the children. I had originally thought I was asking too much of them by putting more than one problem to solve within each problem solving question, but Dianne said this was ok. So then I got all carried away and created a whole story about a chicken farmer with his eggs and this lasted all week because every day there would be a question relating to the solution from the previous day. This week it's a story about a party.

Some serious problem solving happening!

 The scrapbooks are working brilliantly, I can see at a glance who is doing what, and this made mid- year report writing so easy!
A few things I noticed...

• the gloss testing provided interesting results for some, compared to what they do in class
• the children are getting better at explaining their strategies
• some keep reverting back to additive strategies, or earlier, when they are faced with trickier problems
• 5 minutes silent time for problem solving at the beginning of each task is working well, it discourages the whole group from using the same strategy (this was an issue when we first began)
• revoicing and repeating (talk moves) only seem to work when the children are really focused. Even though I use the ice block sticks, sometimes they just aren't listening! (But I do that too sometimes, just switch off for a bit, so I can't be too annoyed about it!)
  
  
  

  

  See! I can see the whole week, check out each child's strategies and progress, and make my own notes too! It is good!

Muesli Bars!

This is just a quick post. My class had a big discussion about muesli bars some time ago, after a scary amount of muesli bar wrappers kept ruining our chances of winning the trophy in our Zero Waste school. To solve the problem they decided we should make our own, (which we have not yet done) and then we got to talking about health and nutrition and cost. This resulted in a collection of empty muesli bar boxes arriving at school on a daily basis, with which nutritional information was compared, and so I just had to make the most of it all and do statistics (even though statistics was not planned for this term!) At the end of it all, we now know

• the difference between histograms and bar graphs
• how to use "pages" on the computer, to produce a professional looking graph
• pie graphs weren't the right graph to display our findings
• what and x and y axis are
• graphs need titles and labels
• pictographs look nice but aren't so easy to read when you have lots of data
• that you need to be accurate
• Pam's Fruit and Nut bars were the best value for money, and the healthiest!

  

  Yes, Griffin's 100's & 1000's Muesli Bars was voted "Most Attractive Packaging" by Room 7!