Maths Warm ups

On the weekend I was fortunate to attend the annual Maths Conference in Auckland led by the Maths Association. This is always a great opportunity to learn from others and hear some new ideas when implementing maths in class. This maths conference had me leaving with two main ideas that I want to share with you. 

Number Talks
Number talks are a great way to get all students involved in problem solving or a particular strategy sharing warm up lesson. Number talks are popular all around the world with lots of resources you can use to go alongside this. 

Today I trialled Number talks in class and my kids loved it!! They were able to use the hand signals alongside the number talk lesson to show their thinking, strategy or if they agree. We started with a basic problem and worked through how it was to look. The students loved being able to talk about their answer and the way they solved it. 

Splat!
Splat is an amazing resource that can be used as a warm up or even along side number talks. It is an interactive number sense problem solving powerpoint that has students solving how many spots, then figuring how many are hidden under the splat. 

Each slide has a different number set and then has a different splat amount hiding some of the counters. These are amazing and my students were really engaged in the activities that were going on. Even my low learners that would not usually join in - they were engaged and participating in the activity. 
Download the splat activities from Steve Wyborney here.