Kia Ora koutou,

Yet another busy week of Numerical thinking has passed.  For Number Knowledge we have been skip counting back and forward in 2s, 3s and 5s.  This helps us to be able to calculate our 2, 3 and 5 times tables accurately.  We also made an amazing discovery on Thursday!  Fractions are just another form of division.  We were finding the fraction of a set and realised that the denominator tells us how many groups we divide the set into, e.g.

To work out 1/5 of 20 we take the 20 and divide it equally into five equal groups.  So 1/5 of 20 = 4

Multiplication and division has continued to be our strategy focus.  We have discovered that we can use your 2 times tables to work out our 4 times tables and this strategy is  called "Doubles".  We have also been using our 5s to work out our 6s and our 10s to work out our 9s, e.g.

5 lots of (x) 6 = 30 so  6 lots of 6 (x) must be 36.

 

10 lots of (x) 4 = 40 so 9 lots of (x) must be 36

          

Some of our group took their learning one step further and were able to work out more complex equations using our doubles strategy, e.g. 15 x 4

2 x 15 = 30 so 4 x 15 = 60

Hopefully we have brought home our Alien Basic Facts sheets for our 2s, 5s or 10s because we need to master instant recall of these facts to help us with our other strategy work?

Watch this space next week for video footage of our great thinking.....