This website has a collection of interesting prompts, as well as other resources, all designed to show that you can talk about and enjoy mathematics everywhere.
I particularly enjoy the Idea Gallery, which is full of simple stock images or user created photos, that can entice students into discussion about what they can see. Perfect for our younger students, or EAL learners, this can promote number sense and vocabulary through gentle discussion.
For example this image above, you may ask questions like..
- What can you see?
- What is the odd one out? Why? Could another one be the odd one out?
- Which of these is the biggest? Is the heaviest? How do you know?
- How many things can you see? Are the tomatoes one thing or three things?
Try to avoid students saying ‘that one’ or pointing too much, especially for challenge students, have them discuss using positional language. You can at least model that language in the first instance.
You would expect one student to spot the car on its side – take your time with this, which car? The one at the bottom? The yellow one? How do you know it is on its side? The Shuttle Bus only has two wheels, because I can only see two wheels. Is that right? How many wheels can you see? How many wheels can you not see?
There are so many questions to ask and so many directions that younger students could take us! There are other tasks on the site too, but I haven’t explored these fully.
- Ready to go
- Oracy
Maths Beyond the Curriculum 