Learning Math with Calculators

Mrs. C. General at Jamieson school recently borrowed one of the math books available at the District Numeracy Teacher office. The book is entitled, Learning Math with Calculators and there are several copies available for sign out.

Mrs. General really enjoyed the resource and said her students did too. More importantly, she said it reinforced and helped some students better establish their understanding of place value.

She particularly liked the exercise "WIPEOUT" (page 33) which requires students to work in pairs and use their calculator to eliminate (or 'wipeout') a digit from the display of a 3 to 8 digit number, using a subtraction operation. For example, if the first student enters the number 12345678 and the second player decides to remove the 4, then 40 000 must be subtracted from the number displayed to leave 12305678. Play continues on until only zero is left in the display.

This is just one of the 50 pages of activities in the book, which comes from Marilyn Burn's publishing company, Math Solutions Publications. Remember, this book and many more are all available for sign out for education staff at Six Nations to try out in your classroom, or at home. The only catch is, you need to provide feedback (like Mrs. General did) so that other teachers know what great resources are out there.