There has been some interesting ‘I wonder’ and ‘I notice’ moments experienced during last week’s Numeracy lessons in Year 3. One of the tasks was to ‘estimate’ how many cubes or lollypop sticks were in a given pile. As the piles became bigger, we soon discovered how much easier it was to begin placing the objects into groups of either 2, 5 or 10, finally counting them using our times-tables knowledge – hurrah! Our counts became much quicker and far more accurate; we certainly got better and better at both estimating and counting!
The class were also given the Cuisenaire Rods with some problem cards. The cards asked them to find out ‘how many different ways’ they could create the same length. They re-discovered that the numbers could be made using lots of different colour combinations – hence they could be made using different number combinations. After some discussion and sharing of findings, some of the children noticed that these patterns could also be related to the different ways of making even bigger numbers, especially when looking carefully at the value of each digit.
By the end of the week, Year 3 had become ‘estimation’ and ’equivalent’ experts! Good work, Year 3!
