Math and more Math!!!!

The past two weeks in our Grade 5 class have been busy. In Math, we started the year looking at Representing and Renaming Whole Numbers. After administering an initial Diagnostic Test that revealed the students' strengths and areas of concern, I have been busy using different intervention tools/ strategies and resources. Marian Small's Gap Closing Resource has been extremely useful! Her vast experience in Math Education is underpinned by years of solid research. I trust the wisdom in her approach to teaching Math and I do concur that students sometimes struggle in interpreting and representing large numbers for several reasons:

- not recognizing or being able to use the periodic nature of the place value system to read or interpret larger numbers
- confusion about the place value column names
- not realizing that the same digit in a different place represents a much greater amount if it is to the left of a number or a lesser amount if it is to the right
- difficulty in skip counting by hundreds, thousands, or ten thousands


After two weeks of teacher-guided lessons on Representing and Renaming Numbers to 10 000, reflections in Math Journals, games, working with base ten  blocks and peer teaching a "mini project" was given to consolidate the student's learning.

Mini-Project