Maths

    Well who would have ever thought that I would make an entire blog entry about maths. Especially after Jim had told us that when we meet are math teacher to remember it's only four days of math. When we have tons of homework, it's only four days! I was scared she was going to be hard! I was definitely wrong. Before I start writing, math over here is called maths! It is math and statistics, so they call it maths. Anyway, last week we had four straight days of math from eight till three thirty. Before this time, I really wasn't sure if I was going to be able to make it. I thought it would seem like the longest time ever, but it went by so fast! The first day we get there we meet our teacher. Her name is Helen! She has more energy, than anyone I know! She was crazy! Anyway the first day she just gave us so many ideas about maths! I think my favorite one was the monkey number line! It was so cute! What a good way to teach about number lines! You could teach fractions, or counting or anything. I am so excited to use this in my classroom!

    Along with that, we learned a lot of fun games to play. We played the I have, who has, The place value game, as well as the mystery box number. It was so much fun. I really can't wait to teach math in my class!

 

 That was day one! The next day was so much fun! We talked about how you can get children to understand the concept of ones tens hundreds etc. For this she had several different colored ice sticks (Popsicle sticks) and we had to make bundles of them. She then would give us problems like we were putting them in to packs of ten and we had to be the most efficient and add different numbers to make the packs! It was a lot of fun! After we had done that activity it was time to make a body garden! In this it was teaching so many math skills, as well as other subjects skills too. The object of this was to create a garden in a group. There were four members in the group and you all had to make the same picture (ie. flower, tree etc). But the measurements for the different parts of the picture were measurements from your body. So the stem of the flower could be the length of your knee to ankle, or the width around your head! This was so neat! After we had created the garden we talked about comparing the different pictures, and learned to compare things! This was such a great activity!

(Anna, Nancy, Emily, Nicole)

 (Nancy, Nicole, Emily, Anna)

Our garden is rocking huh?! We were way proud! Anyway so that was day two of math, and yes we spent pretty much the entire day working on our body gardens! The next day of math was just the same! A very time consuming project that incorporated several math skills, as well as social studies, science, and reading! I loved this teacher. The things she taught me I will most definitely use in the classroom! Anyway, we made tapas! How you do it is you start with a grid, and draw a pasifika design. Next you get the big piece of paper and draw the grid on the piece of paper. The once you grid it, you start measuring and transferring the  design from the grid onto the big piece of paper. Once you have done that you go over the lines in black skerples (sharpies ha ha). Then you get to dye the paper! Once you die the paper it has to sit and dry! It felt like it took for ever, but I'm pretty sure it didn't. Anyway then after you've died it you bleach out the parts you want tan with a cotton bud (Q-Tips). Then after we put it together to make  giant class quilt of pasifika designs! It was so much fun! And I must say they all turned out so different, but incredible! 

(Anna, Nancy)

(Neeley, Christine, Rebecca)

(Anna, Nancy, Allie)

(Back (Left to right) : Janet, Karalee, Allie, Jessica, Emily, Heidi, Whitney, Neeley, Katie Front (Left to right): Nicole, Christine, Dianna, Nancy, Rebecca, Anna, Hannah)

 That's something I was very impressed with, especially my boarder (you can't really see it, I'll show you when I get home), But I spent a lot of time on it! Anyways, that was the end of day three! The next day was our last day of math! I'm going to be honest and say I was really sad! Anyway we had the best day of class! We were all having so much fun! We started out, and we talked about graphs. She then handed us all a bag of cadbury pebbles (very similar to M&M's), and then we had to sort them by color. Before we could sort them we had to make a prediction of what color would have the most. I predicted purple. It didn't win, it was close, but it wasn't the most. After we had made our picture graph with materials (we used the pebbles to mark the spot), we turned it into a bar graph. After the bar graph we turned it into a strip graph/stack graph, Janet and my strip graph was was big! After we made the strip graph we turned it into a circle, then made a pie graph! Once we had the pie graph, we used hundreds beads to find the percentage! This was so cool! I haven't done this before, and this was another one of those things that was very curriculum based, but very engaged learning! This is something else I will take into my class!

(Nancy, Janet)

 

(Janet, Nancy)

 

 

 (Janet, Nancy)

         That picture was really hard for Janet and I to take! We wanted to eat our pebbles so bad, but we were a little bit slow, so we didn't get to finish before we came back together and started discussing. We had to wait for like twenty minutes with them sitting in front of us. It was pretty hard! Anyway so that was really fun! It was such a great math class! After math, Nicole, Whitney, Jessica, and I decided that we wanted to go shopping. We didn't have any homework, and so we figured it was the perfect time! Whitney got a new All-Blacks Jersey, I got a new dress, Nicole got a new dress, and Jessica got a traditional Kiwi dancer costume. It was so much fun! We didn't really think we'd get anything, but we just decided to! Then we did a little fashion show! Here is what we got! 

(Nicole, Nancy, Whitney, Jessica)

      Ha ha! Okay, so maybe we didn't REALLY go shopping! After we had finished our pebble games, she had us get into groups of four and we had to make a traditional kiwi outfit all out of news papers! It was so much fun! We were timed, and could only use 4 sheets of coloured (we were told in New Zealand we spell it this way so you need to start practicing our spelling) paper, 3 meters of string, tape, and twenty sheets of Newspaper! Our style is looking good! After we had created it we got to put on a parade and model for our class and Jim! It was so much fun! This had nothing to do with math, but she wanted us to do it so we did! And we LOVED it!

Before we added the string around the center! Our work in progress!

 My TOTALLY, INCREDIBLE, AMAZING FASHION DESIGNERS
(Hannah Kern, Me, Rebecca Johnson, Janet Leishman)

 

      Last but not least the beautiful parade! I got to be the first in the parade! It was so great! I wished I would have had candy to throw out in the parade, then I'm pretty sure this would have been the most exciting parade ever! ha ha! It was a lot of fun!  

      Anyway, it was heaps of fun! I loved my maths class! I don't think I could have asked for a better maths professor, class, or situation! It was heaps of fun! Plus on top of all of these super fun things we did, we also got over 300 math games on our computers that we will be able to take and use in our classrooms! I am so excited! Well that is maths!