Numeracy Experience Session 1: Count Your Tricks or Treats (23/09/13)

Blog Entry 2 – review for session 1 on 23/09/13 (Monday)

My, oh my! It has been almost a month since my last entry! I am very sure all of you have been waiting anxiously for my reviews and updates, right? Well, let me first of all apologize to all of you for the late posts due to my tight commitments at work. I am sure my dear parents are aware that I am the Advisor for the Kindergarten Twos’ Year-End Ceremony & Concert event scheduled on 3 November 2013. It is indeed a challenge for me to balance off my school and work expectations. Anyway, this quote that I came across fit me well enough in the situation I am in: "Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish" (John Quincy Adams). So now I need to inject more substance of patience and perseverance in order for me to have the energy to share with you about the knowledge that I have gained in my Elementary Mathematics module. :)

Even though it has been three weeks since my session with Dr Yeap, the experiences that I want to share with all of you, remain fresh in my mind! Really! On my 1^st day of class on 23^rd September 2013, the session was a breeze. Content was kept light and entertaining with the activities that Dr Yeap has provided for us to explore. We were kept occupied with solving Mathematical related activities and two of my favourites for the night were:-

Activity 1        : What’s the letter in the 99^th position of your name
How to play  : Write down your name on a piece of paper (space them out if you want). Find out what letter would it be at the 99^th counting position (do not count the same letter that you last stopped).
Example         :

Learning point:

• This activity was a tedious yet interesting one. It was amazing to note and discover several possible methods while I was doing the above activity in class. The first one was of course the most obvious, which was to count manually till 99 (no, of course I didn’t do that! I was too impatient to even consider this method…hehehe).
• The second method was the one that I attempted to shortcut the process, which was the placement of numbers and digits with a ‘1’ in them such as 1, 11, 21, 31, etc. These are all in the same column in their respective rows. Hence, when I reached 91, it was easy for me to move on to 99 and voila! I discovered the second letter ‘e’ from the left of my name as the letter in the 99^th counting position.
• There were two other methods that my classmates figured out such as all numbers with digit 9 in the ones place are all in the same column (9, 19, 29, 39, etc), as well as numbers that are multiples of 10 are all under the first letter ‘e’ of my name. Amazing, right??

So parents and fellow blog readers, which letter in your name stands at the 99^th count? Would you be able to discover other possible ways to attain the solution? Do let me know here, okay. :)

Activity 2        : Card trick

How to play  : Get a stack of cards numbered from 1 – 10. Shuffle them in such a way that as you spell out the number words in chronological order, the card that you hold up matches the number word that you have just spelt (o-n-e = 1)

Learning point         : To tell you frankly, as I am uploading this entry onto my blog, I have yet to understand why there is a need for the cards to be shuffled and placed as in the image below, in order to meet the objective of the game.

Positioned from left to right: 7, 5, 2, 8, 6, 3, 1, 10, 9, 4

(7 to be placed at the bottom of the deck, and 4 being the top of the deck of cards)

Mathematically, I can't figure out the reason. However, LOGICALLY I may be able to reason it out. *winks* If we were to look at the arrangement of cards from the right, let us spell 'one'. O-n-e. And the number card positioned after we end the spelling is the number '1'. With that, we can chuck the '1' aside and continue to spell 'two'. T-w-o. And the number card positioned after we end the spelling is the number '2'.

Anyone of you out there game enough to try this out?

 

What I discovered from Dr Yeap in today’s session:

• There are procedures BUT there are no rote procedures
• 0 to 9 are digits (single); but numbers are all figures and numerals (two digits) such as 43, 76, etc. As teachers, be clear of the terms ‘digits’ and ‘numbers’ when teaching Numeracy to children

Till we meet again in my next blog entry! Very soon, I'm pretty sure! Toodles!


Yours sincerely,
Miss Khadijah Senan