Time measurement

Hello!

How are you doing today? I hope you are all great. 

In this post I want to talk about a topic that I really like, and I think is pretty interesting. As always in this blog, related to measurement in Primary Education.

When we hear the word measurement, I am sure that what come our minds is to measure length, weight… But what about measuring time? It is also very important to teach our students about it, and I feel that sometimes it is a bit forgotten, or we give it less importance than what it really has.

Measuring time can be a fun and interesting thing to learn when you are child, and there are hundreds of different activities that I love! I am going to give you two ideas that I have seen during the internships I have already done at schools and that were so successful.

1. Create your own clocks! You just need a paper plate, some cardboard and colors, it is really fun. Once you have created it, play with a partner to guess the time he or she put in his/her clock.

2. Time bingo! For this activity the teacher just needs to print one board for each student in the class. You can play all together at the same time, and see who are the first three winners!

Finally, here you have a video where the basic concepts about time measurement are explained in a clear and simple way!

Any idea or comment is welcomed!

Thanks for reading!

The last banana

Hey there!

Today's post is a bit different from what I usually do, but I believe you will love it!

I am sure you know about TED talks, and you would have seen at least one (if not,you should, I am a big fan of them, just in case you had not realised). 

So, today I was watching some of these talks and I found this video, that is related to the content of this blog, so I thought I should share it with you. 

"Imagine a dice game, if the highest number that appears is one, two, three or four, player one wins. But, if the highest number appeared is five or six, then, player two wins". Do you think you know the solution? Then, you might watch the video and understand how probability works in this situation. 

I think we should provide our students with resources of this kind, as we need to make them think, use their brains! If we just use the textbooks and do the exercises that we find there, we are not helping them to develop their minds, or as I like to say it, to train their brains.

Thanks for reading!

Measure me

Hello!!

How are you doing today?

Today I wanted to share with you an idea for starting to use some measurement units with kids from the first course of Primary Education.

It is an activity that I could put in practice when I was doing my first internship in a school, and it was a total success (I hope you love it too!). I called it "My first numbers".

The aim of the activity was to make a card with each student information that we will use as a part of the class decoration.

So, the first thing we did was to collect the information. The kids had to ask their parents some questions: Which was my weight when I was born? Which was my height? When did I start saying the first words? When did I get my first teeth? Once they did this, we measured each student’s height and weight in the class. With all this information, they could now start filling their own cards. Once they wrote it, they pasted a picture of them when they were babies on it.

With all the cards created, the students could compare the differences between their numbers when they were newborns and their information now, and they really loved it! It was also a great idea to place all these cards around the class, it was fun!

Furthermore, if you make it a bit more complex, introducing more information, you can use it with higher level students.

Share pictures with us if you bring it to your classes!

Thanks for reading!

Playing cards

Hello everybody!

Probability is a numerical description of how likely an event is to occur, or how likely it is that a proposition is true. And this is another topic related to measurement that you will have to work with students from the last two years of RPimary Education. 

As with statistics, I believe probability is an easy content to bring to a reality that promotes interest among the students, and today I am going to show you an example. 

As probability is really present when playing cards, in this case, I suggest you use the famous Spanish deck. 

A Spanish deck is formed by 40 cards (some with 48), and it has four suits: coins, cups, swords and batons. Furthermore, there are ten different kind of cards on each suit: ace, two, three, four, five, six, seven, jack, horse and king. Here I sahre with you a picture that will help you clarify this idea. 

Now, the existing games to play with these cards are boundless, but there is something in common among all of them: the probability plays a really important role.

I am sure your students will know different games with this deck. You can use any of them to make them solve some mathematical problems on probability (at the same time they are playing), such as: What is the probability to take a gold card if you are playing with other three people? And to take a jack? And to take a card with more that three  swords?

As I always say, please share pictures with the blog if you use this idea with your class, or leave any doubt, idea or whatever you need on the comments!

Thanks for reading!