Belinda Keir- EXCEL WORK in mathsFrom Belinda :
"I use Excel to teach the 'draw a table', 'make a list' and 'look for a pattern' strategies in problem solving. Each child creates a Workbook in Excel, then solves each problem on a separate sheet. Lesson one is just about creating skip counting patterns on the first page - put a number in the first cell of a column, put a formula in the cell below (e.g. =A1+1) and then use ctrl+D to copy the formula into all the cells in a column. |
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Change the number in the top cell and see how it changes all the others. This is where you find the students who didn't understand the explanations of formulae and just typed numbers in every cell.
After that we solve one problem step-by-step together as a class - the Farmyard problem (attached) is good for this because it intruduces multiplication and subtraction as well as addition. The main difficulty students have is correctly itentifying which single cell in the sheet has the answer. Instead, students will often highlight a whole row or the cell with 266 in it. After that, I have a bank of problems that children can choose to solve - print them on card and slip each sheet into a sleeve so they can be re-used. If us use different coloured card for each problem it makes them easier to sort. I've attached a few examples and they generally include a references for where the problem came from." |