Today, Crew Hamill kickstarted their new maths unit – statistics – by interpreting pictograms. We first identified what a pictogram was and discussed how these are used to illustrate data. We worked as a crew to discuss a pictogram that detailed the number of animals a vet had seen during a week. We identified that a key shows what each of the pictures are worth within the table and then used this to answer a number of questions about it. Following this, we worked in mini crews to answer a range of questions about different pictograms, interpreting the data in front of us.

Crew Hamill finished their money unit in maths by spending the lesson working out how much change people should receive. They had three activities to complete on a round robin. The first group involved continuing in our fruit and veg shop with Miss Kelly. They identified the items they wanted to buy, worked out how much they were going to cost them and then worked out the change they should get when purchasing with £5 or £10. The second group involved working their way around the room to identify challenge questions (1, 2 or 3 stars for difficulty) and solving them. These all involved either one step or multi step questions that required them to identify change. The final group involved working in a cafe. The children had to choose one drink, one food item and one dessert. They then had to work out how much they had spent by adding the amounts together. Once they knew what they had spent, they had to work out how much change they would get from £5 or £10.

Today, Crew Hamill got to grips with using money in the real world by becoming shoppers and shop keepers! We have our own little fruit and veg shop set up in crew that we were able to visit and spend our pocket money at. We had to figure out which items we could by and decide if we had enough money to pay for them all by adding the prices of them together. The shopkeeper then had to figure out how much change we should get by subtracting the amount we had spent from the amount we paid with. Alongside this, we went on a challenge hunt around the room, deciding which colour challenge we were going to attempt. These challenges had addition and subtraction money problems on them and we had so much fun working out the answers!

Crew Hamill have just begun their maths unit on money. Today, we focused on pounds and pence, identifying what each of the notes and coins that we use look like and discussing their value. We then worked in mini crews to create different amounts using imitation money which we loved! We couldn’t believe how real it looked! We also looked at groups of money and had to use our counting skills to work out the total amounts.