Week 2 Challenge Review, and end of the stupid challenge idea

The Counting On activity went well, and we used blu-tac to create the giant graph on the wall. We did run out of room for the prime numbers column and had to overlap.

Edit: Here is a picture of the graph. In future I would consider using a large floor space instead of the wall, so that we could fit all the prime numbers in properly! And discuss what would happen to the graph if we did more numbers. And if I put it on the wall again I would include labelled axes.

They loved the active "yes or no" categorising game. Each student had a number, and two ends of the room had "Yes" and "No" up on the wall. I called out questions like "Are you a prime number?", "Are you an even number?", "Are you divisible by 3?", "If you add 5 to yourself, do you have 4 as a factor?" and so on. It provided a good opportunity when someone was unsure to ask the whole class relevant questions like "How can you tell if a number is divisible by 3". And they loved it.

I'm already over the challenge thing

 Not surprising, but with contributions from a personal situation, I lost a lot of motivation. Plus two of my classes annoy me. But Year 7 continue to be lovely, so I will keep doing my best for them at least.

Year 7: We're going to be looking at prime and composite numbers and factors. The main activity I want to use for primes and composites is one from the Counting On numeracy framework. Students draw rectangles to find the factors of numbers (a different number on each sheet) then lay them on the floor (or stick to the wall) to create a bar graph of how many factors they have. Then you can instantly see prime numbers, and how one is not a prime, but has a special column all to itself. It also separates square numbers from other composites. After they've got the general idea I want to try an idea from Brent Vasicek at Scholastic for an in-class assessment of their understanding. I think I will give each child a number and then get them to sort themselves according to different criteria, e.g. primes over here, composites over there, sit down if you have 4 as a factor etc.