Training guide
Big numbers
Use games like the one outlined next to help your learners to develop their numerical thinking and understanding.
Activity 7.5: Developing fluency with big numbersConsider what kinds of numbers your learners need to understand to confidently use them in all curriculum areas. For example, they will need small decimals in science, dates and numbers to thousands in history, and use very big numbers and percentages in geography. This activity, based on dates and events in history, can be designed to help learners to explore the numbers they come across in any subject area. Make a set of cards on paper with important events and dates that your learners are working on (see Resource 1). Cut them out and order them with oldest dated event first and newest dated event last. What might learners find challenging if they were doing this activity? For a class activity, write the cards out on large pieces of cardboard so that they can be read at a distance and ask for twenty volunteers to hold them. Then ask all the class to help get the dates in order. Note who struggles with reading and understanding the numbers. In your TGM, discuss how you might use a similar set of cards to develop fluency with big or very small (decimal) numbers in teaching a subject other than history. Work together as a group to produce various sets of cards to use in your lessons in the next week. |
The last activity has two purposes. The first is to show the learners that numeracy can help them understand ideas in real life. The second is to help them develop their numerical vocabulary.