A Great Lesson!

Okay, so based on last unit's lessons, I adapted a few things. Once again I decided to go with the maze idea, as it seemed to be popular with the kids and it turned out to be very efficient. However, I also decided to combine the Addition and Subtraction unit that this new map was designed for, with the same number statues as in the Place Value map so that the kids could revise what they'd learned during that unit.

In this week's maze, they would go through the tunnels like last time, but in the rooms there were two separate statues with a sign in between. On this sign, the was either a '+' or '-' sign. They then had to work out the two numbers shown by the statues and work out the answer to the question shown.

Some changes to the maze were made to make the lesson go better. I made it a lot longer. Last week's was five questions long and this week's was 12.

This picture was taken after I was about half way done, so imagine this about two times bigger and that's about how big the whole thing was. Also, there were no traps in this maze. Whilst they were a bit fun, they proved to be more trouble than beneficial to the exercises last week, as the kids don't yet have amazing coordination with the game. Moving forward and turning is sort of the limit for them. This made the lesson go smoother, and less people were unhappy. But, so as to have something inconvenient for them (which encourages thinking about the question properly), I made it so that when you get a question wrong, you go all the way back to the beginning. This meant that no one wanted to just guess answers. I did feel a bit bad for one kid who got to the last question in about five minutes and then got it wrong and had to do it all again, but I guess that's just the way it goes.

Just like last time, there was a free area at the end for those that finished quickly, but only about four people made it there this time.

In terms of how the lesson went, I feel that this week was amazing! Probably the best yet! Everyone was concentrating so much and trying really hard. I think it helped that this time they had been taught about the topic in mind before today's lesson so many were very confident to begin with. It may have also helped that we had a lot of student teachers from the university with us; more man-power made things a lot easier!

I guess that's all for now until next week. This was the last map and next week will be the last lesson that I teach. Then all of March and the end of this month will be dedicated to making the video for the project fair using all the video footage I have recorded. I realised at the weekend that over half of my 1 terabyte hard-drive has been taken up with footage for this project. As soon as I have the video I'll definitely be deleting all the raw footage. Anyway, until next week, see ya later! :D