Interactive Pictures - Cambridge University Press
One look at the ‘Animal Fields’ poster overcame my misgivings about carrying the huge tube containing the eight double-sided posters back from Derby to Kent via three trains and the underground. ‘Poster’ is an inadequate description of each of these beautiful 840mm × 600mm laminated pieces of mathematical art. The pictures are immediately entrancing, not just to me as teacher, but also to the children. There is a depth of material captured in subtle colours that inspires our imagination.
The posters come with a user guide, which suggests ways of using each one as part of a numeracy lesson, or as a classroom display. While some of the ideas are a useful start to using the posters, teachers will soon be stimulated to find other ways for the children to interact with them as a focus for other parts of the numeracy strategy, and language work.
I used ‘Animal Fields’ over two weeks to look at addition, subtraction, estimation, finding missing numbers, inventing mathematical problems and solving them with my Y1 class. I challenged the children to make up a story from the poster. I chose Richard from a sea of hands: "Seven rabbits had just finished their breakfast when three of them spotted the sheep in the next field, so they went to play with them. Then there were four rabbits left."
We gave him a round of applause.
We didn’t get bored with the poster, because there were so many parts of it to explore. It is possible to write on it with white board pens, using a damp cloth to erase. Each poster has places where it is possible to add problems and extend ideas, and for children to write their answers, which is an added incentive for them to participate.
I needed to do some more work on doubling with my Y1 class. We still hadn’t made the connection between doubling and even numbers. Another poster, ‘Washing Socks’, turned out to be an ideal tool for helping with this. We used it to develop strategies for doubling, counting in twos, and spotting patterns. We added more socks to the clothes line, and counted the socks of the children playing games. One TWO, three FOUR, ...and inspired by the cheerful caterpillar, we counted the feet of some of his friends. On the way to the library the next day I heard Abbie and Georgia happily counting in twos up to thirty.
I feel these posters would be an asset in any KS 1 classroom. Perhaps the posters in the pack could be rotated from class to class during the year for maximum usage. I’m looking forward to using them again some day soon.
Jill Russell is supply teaching for KS1&2 in Kent
Children in Y1 of Brookfields Infant School, Kent, drew the pictures.
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