Sept. 22nd, 2008

Sept. 22^nd, 2008

We have spent the last few days working on place value and writing and reading numbers to billions. During one of the activities, I gave students a blank cheque, showed them how to fill out the cheque (I photocopied one of my personal cheques) and told them to write a number that was greater than X but less than Y. They had to write the number in words and in standard form and until they did it correctly, I would not sign it. This worked great. It made sense to the kids, it gave them a context to learn reading and writing numbers, it gave me great assessment information, which I went and added to the mounting information already, and they were very much engaged. After everyone had my signature, I then posed a question – which table (group) would cost me the most money. This lead them to adding whole numbers, reading out the sum and them putting the sums in order from greatest to least. A great activity. Yeah, me!