Number (order and place value)
Lesson
How many buttons are there in your classroom right now
Discussion
- Did you only think about buttons that were on clothing? Could buttons be found anywhere else?
- What was your definition of a button?
- How did you go about working that out?
- If I changed the question to "How many in the school?", what could you do to work that out effectively?
- What mathematical operations are you using and how can we generalise from the classroom answer to the school, or among the schools in your area?
Taking it Further
- What other objects could be counted or estimated?
- Do the same strategies apply? Or do we need to use different strategies depending on the objects chosen?
- Why would people or companies need to estimate things like these?