Today’s wall sees us:
- adding a pair of commas to punctuate a sentence with a relative clause;
- identifying the adverb in a sentence;
- practising our 12 times table;
- finding the missing numbers on a number line, which include negative numbers.
Month: January 2019
Maths working wall
Here’s another working wall example. Today’s is a maths working wall. We are currently practising the 9 times table for my son in Year 4, as well as looking at some assessment questions. The format that these questions take drives me a little bonkers, as it seems designed to ‘trip up’ the children, but once you know and practise the format it becomes a lot simpler for them.
So, top left we have a missing number equation. This is tricky because the answer is given and is presented to the children in the middle of the equation, so they have to do some problem-solving to work out the missing numbers (in blue).
Underneath this, we have been practising: 10 more, 10 less, 100 more and 100 less for my daughter. This can be made more difficult by starting with a number such as 1989, where you will have to cross to the next thousand.
Lastly, we have what should be a simple partitioning exercise. I say ‘should’ because when they are presented like this with missing number, children tend to ‘over-think’ the problem. In this case, it was a simple case of adding the hundreds and adding the units/ones.
Teaching textual cohesion – a starter
Making jam and cream sandwiches might be a great way to teach cohesion, but if you’re looking for a less messy, text-based example, then look no further…
This is a great activity for teaching textual cohesion and can be adapted to suit almost any age group, depending upon the text which you choose to use.
- First of all, get pupils to identity the nouns. Each separate noun can be underlined or highlighted in a different colour.
- Then, ask them to find the pronouns which link back to those nouns and underline these in the same colour as their corresponding noun.
- Look at these together and discuss how they help the text make sense. You will find that even very young children will be able to observe this, especially if they are encourage to draw on big sheets with coloured pens, or even use arrows to link pronouns back to their original noun.
- For more advanced students, you could look at this as a starting point for talking about anaphoric reference.
In this text, the nouns are in bold and the corresponding pronouns in italics, but colours or would make much more sense in the classroom!
Sarah woke early that morning. She got up and dressed quickly, making her bed and tidying away her toys. Before she made her way downstairs, she checked the room carefully to make sure everything in it was perfectly in order.
As she skipped happily into the kitchen, Smudge the cat greeted her with a loud “meow!” He wove himself in between her legs, almost tripping her up, which was his way of asking for his breakfast. Sarah filled his bowl and placed it carefully back on the kitchen floor. From upstairs, she could hear the sound of her parents’ alarm going off. She would have to hurry if she wanted to make breakfast for them!
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