Poly Plug Activities blackdouglas.com.au

Poly Plug Activities

With your help, this page will continue to develop. Please contact me to have your Poly Plug activities included, acknowledged and shared.

Index

• Getting Excited
  A section of the site where teachers can record, 'while they are hot', the great times they have had investigating mathematics with kids and Poly Plug.
  Write or draw or make a Power Point or... and send it to Black Douglas via any of our contact details.

Chance & Data

• The Crawl

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Counting & Order

• Counting Frames
• Grab
• Making Digits
• Ten Friends ... a Calculating Changes activity
• Vicky's Problem

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Fractions

• Fraction Game
• Fractions, Poly Plug & a MathMate ... a Calculating Changes activity

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Kids' Own Games

One of the exciting things about kids having easy access to Poly Plug is that they often invent their own games. The games may not be directly related to learning mathematics, but the skills and processes required to design, trial and modify your own game support and extend the development of literacy and numeracy.

• Harry's Holes
• West Ulverstone Primary School, Tasmania.
  Jan Mansfield teaches a Composite Year 3 & 4 class and is involved in a professional development program called Changing Places that has resourced the school with sets of Poly Plug (among other things) to support a shift to a more inclusive, hands-on, problem solving approach to mathematics. The students designed the games in this link, wrote out the rules and created the first version of a web site to publish them. This link is based entirely on their work.

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Operations & Equations

• Integers ... An adaptation of Task 130 from the Mathematics Task Centre Project (see below)
• Investigating Division
• Number Shapes ... a Calculating Changes activity
• Order of Operations ... a Calculating Changes activity
• Row Points ... An adaptation of Task 9 from the Mathematics Task Centre Project (see below)

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Pattern & Algebra

• Eric The Sheep ... An adaptation of Task 45 from the Mathematics Task Centre Project (see below)
• Introducing Algebra
• Kite Tails
• Vicky's Problem

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Problem Solving

Mathematics Task Centre Project One of the principles of the Project is that a task has a life as a whole class investigation. In this context teachers model how a mathematician works. To engage this life there needs to be enough copies of the concrete material. For many tasks, Poly Plug can provide that material. Mathematics Task Centre Project & Poly Plug details these tasks.

Other Problem Solving Activities Harry's Holes Poly Plug Penté Queenie Rotation Challenges The Crawl Vicky's Problem

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Shape & Space

• Copy Cats
• Exploring Symmetry
• Making Digits
• Poly Plug Battleships
• Rotation Challenges

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  • Calculating Changes index
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