Math minds and fun

Math can be magical in stretching the mind and at the same time allowing to have fun.

When we listed on Friday what we have learned in the past two weeks, the list looked impressive:

Place Value chart
Digits
Value of the digits
Modeling large numbers
Reading large numbers
Writing large numbers in standard form
Writing large numbers in extended form
Comparing large numbers
Rounding large numbers

Everyone has made progress in growing their understanding. The students may be in different places on how much they understand and how confident they are but I can happily say that everyone has put forward effort and practiced what we have learned. They understand that to remember everything for longer time and to be able to show their learning confidently they need to continue practicing.
Fortunately the practice doesn't have to be boring.

At the beginning of the lesson the students us white boards to write answers to the problems I give to them. Since the students don't have to show their answers but check them independently they feel more at ease to participate. When they find that something was confusing they can later stay with me and practice a bit more. We also play games. For example to practice comparing numbers we played a crocodile game with dice. The students had a choice whether they wanted to use a 4-digit, 5-digit or a larger number. After rolling a dies they filled in the places with the digits they had rolled and then the one with a bigger number got  point, or the one with the smaller number, depending how the partners had agreed at first.