Just so you know, the title is the answer to yesterday’s question. All was ok. Not great but ok.
I have learnt that I need to think less and rely more on my instincts when teaching. That is a big step as I over-think pretty much everything. Most things. Still, plenty of good points came out of the lesson I taught today that, to be fair, has dominated my thinking over the past few days.
Lego is definitely a great tool to develop knowledge of fractions. There are so many potential relationships between the differing brick types to explore and it leads to many interesting ideas. The thinking behind using it was linked to the way that Cuisenaire rods can be used. Original rods are relatively hard to get hold of now. Scandalously, schools threw them out when they went out of fashion. The rods are ten different sized rods that grow in relative units from one to ten. Diene’s equipment pretty much replaced them with hundred cubes, ten rods and unit blocks. In fact most schools have only kept the ones and tens to bolster their stock.
Anyway, Cuisenaire rods were perfect for fractions, ratio and proportion work – particularly if values were given to specific rods then extrapolated. Massive amounts of thinking was needed to work on that. The Lego thing was a total rip off of that… but it worked!
Maths alert: 324 is the sum of four consecutive primes (73 + 79 + 83 + 89)… I just can’t stop myself.
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