Week One

After initially identifying 5 children that were struggling with the concept of subtraction during Maths sessions. I decided to form them into a group that I would target teach the necessary skills to subtract and use learning objects relating specifically to subtraction to support this.

The first lessons involved teaching subtaction on one hand up to a sum of 5 and this was followed or extended with subtraction with counters up to a sum of 10.

Throughout the first week, the chidren were introduced to subtraction soccer. They played the learning object following a teacher led teaching session. The group were easily able to understand the rules of the activity and enjoyed the game once they were able to control the players using the mouse. The initial difficulty was in sharing the two computers available with the 5 children. Also I had to set the programme up prior to my lesson with the children and during the lesson, other children had selected other games to be playing on. So I had to take the time to reset the programme again.

Taking turns on the computer was OK but was not ideal, the children each took 5 turns before swapping with each other.

The children thoroughly enjoyed this soccer activity.
At the end of the week I collected the following comments from the children...

"Awesome, makes it (subtraction) easy on the computer"
"Helping me by putting more numbers in my head"
"It's good because it shows the answers in pictures"

On the Friday of Week One the whole class had a session in the Computer Suite. I introduced the Subtraction Soccer Learning Object to the class. All children enjoyed the activity and were keen to use it immediately back in the classroom later in the day.