Some recent maths learning that has been taking place in Crew MW.

Sorting shapes – circle or triangle? We discussed what makes a circle a circle and what makes a triangle a triangle. We then used these descriptions to decide whether the shapes needed to go in the circle group or the triangle group. We then investigated items around the classroom and found examples of circles and triangles.

Finding 1 less – how do we know? We talked about finding 1 less and how this meant we would end up with a smaller amount. We created towers of 5 blocks and removed blocks 1 at a time to find 1 less than our starting number. We then checked how many were left by counting them. We got really confident as predicting what we thought 1 less than our starting number would be!

Composing 4 and 5 – how can we make different numbers? We looked at how numbers can help us make other numbers. We investigated different ways we could make the number 4 and the number 5 by putting small world pieces into 2 baskets and seeing how many were in each basket (parts) and then seeing how many we had altogether (whole). We worked really well together to talk about how we could move the pieces between the baskets, how many we had in each and then predicted our whole before using our counting skills to check our answer. We then really challenged ourselves and added a third basket!

In maths today, we read the story ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’. We used the language, ‘over’, ‘under’ and ‘through’ to describe what the characters were doing. After we learnt the vocabulary, we built the story using small world resources and showed how the characters moved through the story, using our new vocabulary to describe what they were doing. We then placed our peg dolls around the classroom and used language like, ‘on top of’, ‘underneath’, ‘inside’ and ‘next to’ to describe where the peg dolls were.

Crew MW were exploring finding one more in maths this morning! We listened to a song about elephants and showed how many elephants there were using our cubes. Each time a new elephant joined, we used our cubes to show one more! We noticed that every time we added one more, our tower got bigger because the numbers were getting bigger.

In maths today, Crew MW have been listening carefully to the amount of sounds that they heard and counting these into their five frames. They used the objects to represent the numbers and talked about how many squares were full and how many were empty. I’m really impressed with how hard all of the children worked and how smart they were getting with representing their numbers!