A Maths Lesson At Home

Okay, so you are in lockdown and have 1 or more kids at home with you, and YOU are now the teacher!!

Don’t be alarmed, I hope this sample will give you a little bit of confidence in learning with your children, rather than them just doing it on their own without any collaboration and discussion during it.

The information and guidelines being presented by the Education Dept, and schools suggests daily Numeracy session ranging from 30 – 60 mins, depending on the age of your children. My experience has been that a great lesson can be as short as 10 mins, to as long as 2 hours!! You’ll discover this quickly!!

You are not expected to deliver a maths lesson the same way that it is done in a classroom for these reasons:

1. You are not a teacher (well, you might be, but most aren’t!)

2. There are only a few children in your ‘class’, rather than 20 or more.

3. The children will be different ages and abilities (unless you have twins, triplets etc!!)

4. You may not have the same resources as their school

5. You were taught ‘a different way’ – we hear this all the time.

So, I’m taking all of these things into account and trying to present a structure that supports families at home, and maintains as much as possible the structure and format that the children will be familiar with from school.

And for any teachers reading this, please keep in mind that this will look different to one of our lessons at school for a host of reasons. It is a plan that hopefully suits and supports people who have not been in this position before. I’m sure many of you might approach it differently, and I welcome your ideas at all times.

Please feel free to spend more or less time on each section, depending on the interest level of the children, their level of engagement and your own confidence in presenting it. (This will develop rapidly!!)

So, here goes…

Begin with a fun game or activity that stimulates their mathematical thinking and sets the tone for the session.

· This might only be for 5 or so minutes.

· Counting practice, forwards and backwards by 1, 2, 3 4 etc. Rather than always starting at 1, try starting at a random number eg : “Start at 11 and count forward by 3’s” etc

· Roll dice (2, 3, 4 or 5) and quickly add them together. ”Which numbers do you find are easiest to add together?” How many times can you roll a certain target eg 10, 16, 25 etc

· ‘Ro Sham Bo’. Played the same as ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’, but you say ‘Ro, Sham, Bo’. As you say the last word each player puts out any number of fingers on one hand. How quickly can you add them together? Try with two hands each. Aim for a total eg 15, 10, 19 etc.

· ‘Greedy Pig’. Roll a die. Children keep a running total by adding each number on to the previous one rolled. They can stop at any time by writing down the current total. Once they write down a total, that is their score for that round. BUT…if a 5 is rolled and they are still ‘playing (ie they have not written down a number yet) they get a score of 0 for that round. Play 5 rounds then add up your scores. As soon as a 5 is rolled, that round is finished.

· ‘Card Flip’ – Start at 50 (or a higher/lower number) Take turns flipping over a card from the deck. If it is red, subtract that number. If it is black, then add. Whoever lands back on the starting number loses that round.

· ‘Bingo’ – Children write down 9 numbers on a grid. You choose the range eg 0-20, 0- 100 etc. Make up questions using information from around your house. Eg Milly had how many pups last year? What is the number of the house 3 doors up our street? How many trees in our front yard? Our pets have how many legs altogether? Etc. Get the kids to contribute questions, that way they will hopefully get rid of one of their numbers.

These are just a few ideas, there are more in some of my blog posts as well as what the kids can tell you they do at school. Get one of them to run the warm-up session!!

Start the next stage by posing a challenging problem without instructing on solution methods;

· You might spend around 10-15 mins at most on this.

· This could be an open ended question, that prompts them to do some independent thinking and discussion. Eg There are 3 numbers that add up to 20. What could they be? 6, 4, 10 would be okay. 15, 2, 3 is fine too. As your children will at different ages, expect differing responses. Eg An older child might include fractions and decimal numbers. This activity in itself is very rich as it has the children using the 4 operations skills ( +, -, x, ) You could change the target number to suit the age and ability of your children.

· There may be set tasks from school to work through. Identify the task at hand, what it is asking them to do.

If there are word problems, you may find this approach helps to break down the problem into more manageable parts.

· You might use this time to do what we term ‘explicit teaching, where we actually go into detail about a specific skill or concept. Eg How to do vertical addition, subtraction, multiplication, finding the area of a square, making fractions, naming fractions, using various measuring tools, ordering numbers etc.

Allow your children time to engage with the task by themselves and with each other. This is where you can be an active bystander, sharing in their learning and discovery and providing further assistance where needed.

· This is where the children get to use the skills you have just practised in real life ways.

- Can you find 5 tins of food in the cupboard that add up up to 900g?

- Create your own device that accurately records 1 minute, 30 secs etc

- Make a paper cube that has all sides with an area of 20cm

- Make a cake, but double/halve the recipe

- Create a timetable of your day, showing how much time is devoted to different activities.

- Design a set of instructions to draw a triangle

- Make the strongest tower that you can using just spaghetti and mini marshmallows

- Your children may have a project to work on that you or their teacher may have set. They may have designed one for themselves.

- This is a time to put skills and concepts to practical use. Rather than completing example after example of addition problems, create a rich context for using this skill – Which tins weigh the most – tomatoes, baked beans, fruit etc?

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Structure the task with enablers and extenders.

· This means to set a suitable range of difficulty and ease for your children. We don’t want it to be too easy, where they do it without thinking and very little challenge. Nor do we want it to be too difficult, where the task is beyond them and no meaningful learning occurs.

We want it to be so that they can do the task, but experience some level of challenge that requires them to draw on their previous experiences and knowledge in order to solve the task.

This is where they develop strategies, share ideas and rule out other outcomes for themselves.

If they show that they can solve a problem in one way, can they show it in other ways as well?

Orchestrate discussion, emphasising your child’s explorations and mathematical thinking. Reflections

· This is where you can generate responses that get your children to further reveal what they are learning.

· Rather than closed questions only ( where there is only one answer eg __ + 25 = 100, ask them how many ways they can make the number 100)

· Could you solve this another way?

· Explain how you made this to someone else.

· Is this always the response/answer/result you will always get?

· What did you learn today – about the content? About how you worked on the problem? What do you want to know more about?

· Where will I be able to use these skills elsewhere?

· If I did this again, I’d change it this way…

As I said earlier, this is just my suggestion, others may differ.

Do what suits your kids the best at any given time, give them the opportunity to explore, but always be on the lookout for those moments where you identify the need for some explicit teaching.

They may not respond immediately as it takes many, many attempts before some concepts really begin to stick.

Good Luck!!