Idea 282: FREE 4-Way Differentiated Set of ‘Find the Fib’ Calculations.

fib

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This is a set of four sheets of calculations, with each sheet having 5 ‘fibs’ that aren’t correct. The children must use their number knowledge to spot the calculations that aren’t true and circle them.

Base Camp = smaller numbers, just addition.

Hill Climber = smaller numbers, addition and subtraction.

Mountaineer = larger numbers, addition and subtraction.

Everest = Calculations such as 12+3 = 19-4 where each side needs to be checked to see if the calculation balances.

What I particularly like about this activity is that the children know how many mistakes there are, which helps them work out if they still have more mistakes to find or if they have found too many! Also to check their answers you only need to check they have put the circles in the right place, which means you can do a lot of checking quickly in the lesson and then move them up a level if you have time.

This makes for a good stand-alone lesson where you review various mental maths skills first.

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Idea 281: FREE Poem Resource for Adding Suffixes to Words Ending with ‘y’, ‘Santa Contest’

santacontest

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This is a resource I made to teach the Year 2 National Curriculum statutory requirement: “Adding –ed, –ing, –er and –est to a root word ending in –y with a consonant before it” where the guidance is: “The y is changed to i before –ed, –er and –est are added, but not before –ing as this would result in ii. The only ordinary words with ii are skiing and taxiing.”

Like this? Then consider buying a book of poetry by Michael RosenSteve Turner or Allan Ahlberg to read to your children.

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Idea 280: FREE 4-Way Differentiated Resources for Word Problems with Some Extraneous Facts.

misleadingwordproblem

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Ask your class: “I have 5 pens in one hand and 5 pens in my other hand. How many rulers do I have altogether?”

You’ll probably get the answer: “10!”

This is due to the fact that the word problems children usually encounter in Maths only ever include relevant information, which is hardly like real life. This can often tempt pupils not to bother reading carefully and just picking out a few numbers and having a bit of a guess at what they need to do to get the answer.

The focus of this lesson is therefore encouraging children to read problems very carefully to decide what information is important and what information is irrelevant to what they are trying to find out. Each problem features a varying level of extraneous information the children must discard before they can find the answer. There is actually one problem which is unsolvable with the information provided! It is well worth making the point to the children that some of the problems they will be looking at might or might not be unsolvable, as this will again encourage to take their time looking to see if their problem is unsolvable!

This works really well as a one-off lesson or perhaps as a ‘lesson in the bank’ for cover teachers.

TIP: As an extension task, have children try and write their own word problems with extraneous facts in.

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Idea 279: Free Poem Resource for Teaching Adding Suffixes to Words Ending in ‘e’, ‘Hiker Biker’

hikerbiker

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This is a short poem I’ve put together to model some of the examples from the National Curriculum for the Year 2 statutory requirement to teach “Adding the endings –ing, –ed, –er, –est and –y to words ending in –e with a consonant before it”, where the guidance is “The –e at the end of the root word is dropped before –ing, –ed, –er, –est, –y or any other suffix beginning with a vowel letter is added.”

Like this? Then consider buying a book of poetry by Michael RosenSteve Turner or Allan Ahlberg to read to your children.

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Idea 278: Free Resource for Linking Repeated Addition to Multiplication

bleepblorpmaths

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This is a resource I put together to evidence the ITAF 2017 Maths statement for Greater Depth: “The pupil can recognise the relationships between addition and subtraction and can rewrite addition statements as simplified multiplication statements”.

As well as the questions above, there’s further challenge section with mixed number repeated addition such as 5 + 5 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 5 + 5, where the children have to think if they can use the 10 times table or the 5 times table.

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Idea 277: FREE Poem Resource for Teaching Adding ‘ies’ to words, ‘Dad’s Fries’

dadsfries

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This is a very short, very silly poem I wrote that contains examples from the National Curriculum for the Year 2 statutory requirement to teach “Adding –es to nouns and verbs ending in –y”, where the guidance is “The y is changed to i before –es is added.”

 

Suggested ideas to use it are:

  • Have children read the poem and see what they notice. Can you spot a spelling pattern that is prominent? What do you notice about the spelling words?
  • Can you underline all the examples of the spelling pattern? (fries, worries, tries, flies, replies)
  • Can you write any more examples of this spelling pattern that you know which aren’t in the poem?
  • Can you copy a line from the poem, making sure to spell the focus words correctly each time?
  • Can you write your own poem or silly sentences using the focus words?
  • Can you ‘pyramid write’ the words we are focusing on today?
  • Can you ‘say it silly’ with these words and actually say out loud the ‘i-e-s’ sound just so you remember to write it?

Like this? Then consider buying a book of poetry by Michael RosenSteve Turner or Allan Ahlberg to read to your children.

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Idea 276: FREE Poem Resource for Modelling Doubling Consonants When Adding Suffix, ‘Runner Bunny’

runnerbunny

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This is a short poem I put together that uses lots of examples from the National Curriculum to teach one of the statutory requirements listed for Year 2, namely “Adding –ing, –ed, –er, –est and –y to words of one syllable ending in a single consonant letter after a single vowel letter”, where the guidance is “The last consonant letter of the root word is doubled to keep the /æ/, /ɛ/, /ɪ/, /ɒ/ and /ʌ/ sound (i.e. to keep the vowel ‘short’).”

Like this? Then consider buying a book of poetry by Michael RosenSteve Turner or Allan Ahlberg to read to your children.

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Idea 275: FREE Poem Resource for Teaching Suffixes -ness, -ment, -ful, -less, -ly ‘Recipe for a Teacher’

teacherrecipe

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I saw a great idea for writing a recipe-type poem for friendship the other day as a way to evidence the ITAF 2017 statement that the pupil is “adding suffixes to spell some words correctly in their writing e.g. –ment, –ness, –ful, –less, –ly” and I thought it might work equally well with a poem for a teacher.

I’ve included loads of suffixes in here which could be modelled with the children for them to then use in their own poems about whatever topic interests them (recipe for a parent, friend, pet, footballer, Jedi etc etc!).

Like this? Then consider buying a book of poetry by Michael RosenSteve Turner or Allan Ahlberg to read to your children.

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Idea 274: FREE Differentiated Bar Model Challenge Sheets: Show Inverse Operation and Solve Missing Numbers.

barmodelmissingnumber

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This is a differentiated set of challenge sheets I made that focus on showing how the various numbers in a calculation ‘fit’ together, which is what the bar model is really great for. Once this is understood, it can then be shown how addition and subtraction are inverse operations, which allows us to use that knowledge to find missing numbers or to check that our calculations are right.

 

Resources included:

Base Camp, Hill Climber and Mountaineer sheets all focus on evidencing the 2017 ITAF statement for Working At Expected Standard: “The pupil can recognise the inverse relationships between addition and subtraction and use this to check calculations and work out missing number problems (e.g. Δ − 14 = 28).” The numbers that the children are using increase in size on each challenge level, and by Mountaineer the children have to segmenet up their bar model by themselves.

The Everest sheet focuses on the 2017 ITAF Greater Depth statement: “The pupil can solve more complex missing number problems (e.g. 14 + – 3 = 17; 14 + Δ = 15 + 27).”

 

NOTE:

I recently saw a lovely poem to help remember how to solve missing number problems, which looks like this:

missingnumberrhyme

The only issue I had with this poem is that it teaches a procedure without really the reasoning as to why it works. Also, it assumes that the calculation will be laid out in the typical fashion of:

x + y = z.

So it doesn’t work with, for example, something like this:

___ = 7 + 5

According to the rhyme I’d do the inverse and my ‘answer’ would be 2. And this is just the sort of layout you’ll see pop up in all kinds of tests in order to see how much sense of number the children really have as opposed to having memorised a procedure.

So, while this is a great way to remember a useful procedure, I think it would be best used perhaps as a plenary or after several lessons focusing on the ‘why’ stage. You could then see if the children can spot the limits of this rhyme and when it does or does not apply. It could even form the basis of a whole lesson investigating it!

If you do want to share this poem with the children, I’ve adapted it a little below just so it goes in order of missing number at the beginning to missing number at the end and so it’s a bit easier to read (no whiteboard glare):

missingnumberpoem

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Idea 273: FREE Differentiated Challenge Sheets for Partitioning Numbers in Different Ways.

partition

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This is a set of three differentiated challenge sheets I created to evidence meeting the ITAF 2017 WORKING AT EXPECTED STANDARD level objective: “The pupil can partition two-digit numbers into different combinations of tens and ones.”

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