Alternative to give Exercises ;)

I want to share my other way of giving exercises to my Year 3 pupils. Instead of giving them exercises in a book, I found that this type of exercises helps a lot especially in attract the pupils to do the mathematics exercises.

For your information, some of my pupils in Year 3 were not really like to finish up their exercises in their work book. They always did not finish the exercises that I given to them. Other than that, the ability of the pupils also did not same. Some of them can perform in basic operation well, some of them always do careless mistakes and some of them just can do addition. So, I introduce a new way of giving exercise that can help me focus to the pupils and help them to improve.

It is not difficult to prepare. First of all, you need to prepare the mathematics questions. I use different colours to represent different basic operation like green for addition, yellow for subtraction, red for multiplication and purple for division. Then, you give the paper to all the pupils started with addition. If the pupils can do it correctly, they can paste it on the wall that you must prepare and labeled. After that the pupils that had paste their work on the wall can continue with subtraction and so on. You just need to repeat the activity when they finish the four basic operations. This activity can be done daily. I already prepare lots of questions to make sure that I can encourage my pupils to answer the question.

For your information, the pupils were so excited to paste their work on the wall. They were so happy if the answer it correctly and have the chance to show what their doing in the class. Now, this exercises had turn into a reward for them. Whenever I teach another topic and asked them to do exercises in the book, I will tell them that if they finish doing it they will get another colourful question to paste on the wall. It had be a mechanism for them to be motivated to do exercise in the work book.

After a few weeks, the wall was quite full. But, I observed that the addition and subtraction space is more that the subtraction and division. Just a few people can really perform in both multiplication and division. It is fine for me. I think its better to strengthen their ability in what they can rather than push them to do something that they cannot get.

By the way, the question that had been prepared can also be use in any topic that involved addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. You just need to prepare a variety of questions from all the topics related. it is better to make connection rather than just use the number to represent the questions.

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A few days ago, I was walking by the class to go to another class. Suddenly I saw a girl was sitting on the floor with a green question on her hand. She did not realize that I was behind her. She was busy copying the answer from the wall. I did not recognize her for a while but I took her picture first before asking her what she was doing. After that, I touch her back and she saw me. Oh, it was one of my low achiever pupils. She was copying the answer so that she also gets the opportunity to paste her work. I told her that copying is one of the ways to learn but she needs to know what she had copy. I help her and let her paste her work on the wall.

P/s: All children are so cute ;)