Primary Two – Pea's Teaching Blog

Newspapers are great resources for teaching mathematics. Pupils can be made to see how mathematics is relevant in real life from the authentic contexts presented in newspapers.

Here are some suggestions from my students of how newspapers can be used in a mathematics lesson:

Comparing numbers (Primary 1-5; Depending on the magnitude of the numbers)Quote from article in the Straits Times (Online, 16 Feb 2015)
“Before last year’s uptick in marriages involving at least one Singapore citizen, such marriages had fallen from 23,192 in 2012 to 21,842 in 2013.”

Gladys suggested that pupils could be asked to compare the numbers of babies born or the number of marriages in different years.
Presenting information in tables / graphs (Primary 4)
Leela made use of the TV Guide and suggested that pupils be asked to calculate the amount of time allocated for each type of programme for each channel. The information can be presented in tables and graphs so that pupils can compare the different channels easily.
Calculating Percentage Discounts (Primary 5) In teaching percentage, Melody made use of advertisements in the newspapers. The advertisements she found showed the original price and the sale price of household products. Pupils are asked to calculate the percentage discount given using the original price and the sale price.
Calculating Percentage Increase (Primary 6) Quote from article in the Straits Times (Online, 6 Jan 2016)
“Dengue cases rose sharply at the end of last year. The week of Dec 27 to Jan 2 saw 455 cases – the highest for the year and 86 more than in the previous week.”

Based on this quote, teachers could pose the question “What was the percentage increase in the number of dengue cases in the week of Dec 27 to Jan 2”?

There are many more ideas of how newspapers can be used to teach in this website: nieonline.com. Have fun exploring. 🙂

I did this activity with J recently.

I gave him some pieces of square paper and asked him to divide each piece into four quarters in at least 5 ways. He managed to do the division in three conventional ways easily.

After that, this conversation took place between us:

J: I don’t think I can think of any other way.
Me (pointing to one part of the orange paper): Can you tell me what fraction of the paper this is?
J: One quarter.
Me (pointing to one part of the yellow paper): How about this?
J: One quarter.
Me (pointing to one part of the green paper): How about this?
J: One quarter.
Me: If they are all quarters, are you able to combine the information and think of another way to divide this piece of paper into 4 quarters?
J: Ah! I think I can.

J proceeded to show me the folding on the bottom left. Hurray for that answer!

He then used the pink paper and drew two squares. He got stumped after that. I had to provide a hint. “You have already tried dividing the other half into two equal parts horizontally and vertically. How else can you divide this half into two equal parts?” I suggested. J said diagonally. After manoeuvring the paper a little, he managed another answer (top right)! Yay. Following his success, he came up with the top left answer by himself.

I showed him that there were other possibilities using the piece of purple paper. I divided the paper into 16 small squares, then drew 4 L-shapes. Each L-shape is made up of 4 small squares.

Finally, J said he wanted another try and came up with this:

Seems like a Tetris expert in the making

We both enjoyed the simple activity very much. J even said he wanted to try dividing the paper into eighths tomorrow.

I was convinced that children could be stretched to think creatively. When I conducted this activity with teachers-to-be, they usually showed the first three divisions. Some were concerned that children might be confused if we went beyond congruent shapes. I am glad J took up the challenge and discovered that there were limitless possibilities.