Playing to learn

Another activity for sorting involves using plastic Australian coins. Students are given a mix coins of about 10 each and are told that the person to who gets rid of all of their coins first wins.

In the mat area lay 6 hoops out. Ask children to look at their coins and ask if they have any coins that are silver, very small and have the number 5 on it. If they do then they have to place their coin/s in the allocated hoop.  Continue to describe different attributes of the different coins and let students place their coins in the hoops.

To help make the game a bit more exciting a timer is used which initially gives the students 30 seconds to find the coin/s and place it in a hoop. As students get better at the game the time can be reduced. 

As the game gets played again and again you will notice students start to sort their coins into groups on their desks, so that they are better able to quickly get rid of their coins.

Other variations of this game involve using a dice with the coin quantities written on it. You roll the dice and students are only allowed to place one coin in a hoop at a time compared to before when they could place all of their 5cent coins down at once. This variation can then be considered as a game of Chance which still involves classifying and sorting.  

Play can be regarded as an instructional tool whereby informal mathematical understandings develop and provide foundations for sophisticated mathematical thinking (Seo 2003).

This math’s activity involved children going outside and searching for 'Natural' things. As a group they discussed what the word natural meant before excitedly collecting a range of objects.

On numerous occasions the children would ask 'Is this natural?' or they would state 'This is natural because it's a rock!'

After gathering a pile of natural objects the students then went back to class. They were asked to choose an object and describe what it looked like. The teacher explained that we call these descriptions 'attributes' the teacher then asked how all of these objects could be sorted into groups with the same attributes. She demonstrated one way would be by organising all of the leaves into a group and all of the sticks in another and so forth. She asked students to share their ideas of groups the objects could be sorted into.

Many suggestions were given before everyone decided that colour was a good choice. The students then discussed together where the 'brown' pile was going to be and the 'green' pile. Students worked together to sort the objects into the appropriate groups.

Once this was finished they decided to rearrange the objects into groups of smooth and rough. More rearranging occurred after this also. The teacher stepped back and let the children lead and give reasoning why some objects should go where. When moments occurred the teacher would interject wondering questions or provide guidance for the children.