Number - Place Value Resources

One of the easier topics in the curriculum - Place Value - can still perplex many students, particularly when talking about the values of the digits after the decimal point.

I still have students who struggle with ordering decimals and calculating which is closest to a certain value. I also come across students who struggle with the terminology.

Place value is one of those topics than can be addressed through mini activities throughout the year, and it always helps to reinforce the topic - even with high ability students.

I like this as a starter:

The discussion is important afterwards - question their strategies. There is also a harder set as well, which involve decimals. Hopefully some discussion about place value will occur.

Link - Place Value Starter

Another useful way to introduce some 'fun' (of course it is all fun) is with the 'Place Value Game' . There are many variations of this, I don't claim this as my own by any stretch. Mine has a full class version (which I usually play last lesson of term) and a two player version.

Link - Place Value Game


I move onto a Prezi which zooms into a unit to show that it can then broken down into smaller denominations.

We talk about notation then - which one is called what, and why. I think it is super important to explain what 1/10 is. It is a wow moment to many that 0.1 actually shows one tenth. 0.6 is six tenths so 6/10.

One way to consolidate is to play Place Value Bingo. This is a sneaky resource I made. Its a fairly straightforward Bingo - but great for assessing progress. If you play to Full House - which isn't long at all - then you'll end up with 1 in 7 of your class winning at the same time. If you then play one more slide - everyone will win.
So... if there are any students who don't have Bingo - make a note, tell them unlucky, and you know they need some support.

Link - Place Value Bingo

Don Stewards Blog as always, has some good resources with place value and decimals, but the best are found under Decimals labels rather than place value.

I particularly like Decimal Nim:

Finally, two worksheets I use, mainly for lower ability - or an easy early in the year homework.

Rearranging decimals given the text, or spotting the missing place value - is actually done quite poorly in a lot of cases. Something different to many other questions.


Comparing decimals worksheet - not particularly all singing or dancing - but it does a job. I like the extension at the bottom of this sheet - and the rearranging letters section spells out MR HILL SMELLS, so you might want to change that. I tell my class that I got the sheet from a fellow teacher, and that I don't know the answer. Bit of acting when I hear the answer and it generates some cheap laughs :)

Any other ideas out there?

Maths Across The Curriculum - English

All teachers are now under pressure to include some elements of basic English and Maths across all subjects. Let me be clear here - this is not about improving spelling or reading within the maths scheme of work. My aim on this section of blog is to give some ideas to actually team teach for a few lessons, giving equal space to, in this case, English and Maths.



Idea #1

Debating Maths

This is great for a mixed class - or one where you have students who often say things like "what is the point in doing this?" "when will I use this?"

Debate Questions:

Is maths useful when you leave school?
Is maths the most important subject at school?
Is maths fun?

I'm eager to hear of any other ideas, but the first one is what I will be leading with. By giving the students time in English to learn about persuasive argumentative writing, allowing them to research and find out themselves exactly why maths is important, can not only lead to good collaboration between subjects, but will hopefully encourage them to find all the reasons why maths rocks.


Idea #2

A new education minister has decided that Maths will be scrapped from the curriculum as it was his least favourite subject. By using examples of real life applications of maths learnt in school, write a formal letter to the minister against the plans.

Idea #3 - could link in to Food Tech as well

For a cook book, explain with clear instructions how to chance the recipe ingredients for4 people to 6 people, or to 10 people, or to n people. It should be clear enough for anyone to understand. With an example.

Idea #4

Pick a persuasive argument that can be backed up by statistics, Chelsea are the best team in Europe, One Direction are better than the Beatles, Films with female heroes are worse than male heroes. Hollister is overpriced for it's market, Beats headphones are selling faster than Dr.Dre's music etc. The school is getting better because grades are getting better etc..
In the Maths lessons, find and analyse data, understand data representation. In English, create a presentation, letter or whatever to highlight the statistics.

Idea #5

Maths fun with English language

Pick two or three novels, pick a sample page in each. What is the average word length on these pages? What average is better to use? Does Charles Dickens write more, longer words than JK Rowling? is their a difference because of the market audience?
How many similes in a chapter? How many uses of adverbs etc.
What about lengths of books, does that have an effect on popularity? If you wanted to write a classic novel, what length should it be?
Just for a bit more fun - Classics Vs Modern, UK v US, who uses the letter z more often? and so on.....

Idea #6

It's a bit obvious, but writing a newspaper article from the point of a mathematical discovery - or just
about a revelation on how to answer fractions.

 

 

 

But then again, who reads newspapers now anyway?

 

 

Why not some successive tweets from Pythagoras, or a facebook profile etc...

 

Idea #7

 

My colleague @MissArcherMaths ran a cross curricular activity with English involving promoting their own supermarket chain. They included offers and promotions and linked it to their presentation.

The Yr7s loved it - they had their own stalls and I played the Inspector, grilling them about their supermarket offers.

 

 

As usual - please fill me in with any ideas you might use to link the subjects together.