Learning about BIG Numbers

Today we started by looking at the Olympic Medal Tally. We noticed that for a small country, New Zealand was doing really well.

We decided to look at the populations of the countries just below us, to work out if we were bigger or smaller than them. This prompted an interesting discussion as many children didn't know what population meant. Once we had that sorted, we went of in pairs to find out the population of a given country and the number of athletes in their team.

Once we had completed the table it became apparent that most of the class were struggling to read these very large numbers. This prompted an impromptu lesson on reading big numbers...

Using the Place Value Houses (as below) the children learned a story about a Trend Setter House with ones, tens and hundreds in it. The next house also has ones, tens and hundreds but is known as the Thousands house, after that comes the Millions house, etc. Each house can have up to 3 numbers in it. We looked at how big numbers have a gap or comma after every three numbers so it's easy to see how many 'houses' there are. This helps us read big numbers.

For example in the number  43 456 546  if I start on the left I can see the Trend Setter house, then the Thousands house and then the Millions house - this tells me my number is going to be in the millions. 

After learning how to read the numbers we practiced by trying to read the populations of all the countries. By the end of the morning we were rattling off  BIG numbers easily. You could try practicing with BIG numbers at home to see how much we remember!!!  

Our Beautiful Maunga

It was a beautiful day yesterday when we went out to practice cross country with our mountain  standing proud.

Numbers in the Olympics

We've been having great fun this week exploring 'Numbers in the Olympics'. We've created a wall in our class where we put a sticky-note every time we find a new fact to do with numbers in the Olympics. Our wall was very bare on Monday, but by today, Wednesday, it's looking great and The Games haven't even started yet!

Wall of Numbers 

 

                         

We worked in groups to find every one of the 206 countries competing in the Olympic Games, on our world map. We used google maps to find the distance from Rio to each of the countries and then placed a pin on the map to show where the country was.

Using google maps to find the distance

206 pins on the map

We had an interesting discussion about how a 'flat' map can make things different to a 'globe' because on a flat map some countries look like they are on the other side of the world to Rio but they are actually right beside them when you look at a globe. 

We also found out that Usain Bolt holds the world record for the 100m sprint race with a time of 9.62 seconds. Some of the class thought they could probably run 100metres in that time, so we tried it out..... 

Watch this space for more Olympic fun over the next couple of weeks!