This week, Middle School have returned to number lines in order to get to grips with them a little more confidently and comfortably.

We started with a Tiny Turtle challenge, which needed everyone to discuss whether numberlines ALWAYS go up in 1’s, 10’s and 100’s…

Everyone agreed that there were definitely other ways and came up with lots of other examples to prove this.

We then started three human number lines in different ways. We worked out that one went up in steps of 50, one in steps of 100 and one in steps of 2.
 

Children were then assigned random numbers and had to work out which number line they were allowed to join…

We ended with 1000. Each team had to come up with a reason for why their team should claim Ben…the 1000!
 

It opened up so much brilliant discussion and learning. The 2’s line said they wanted Ben because eventually it would reach him…but they would have needed lots more people and one big space. 
 

The 50’s line argued that they could have Ben because their line would reach 1000 quicker.

 

The 100’s line came in with a brilliant argument that they should get Ben because the gap between their last number and Ben was smaller and nearer to 1000.

We also worked out that we could reverse the numberline and it still worked. 

We have also looked at a number line of evenly spaced intervals…but the numbers were 0, 3, 5, 10, 20, 30, 100, 101.

 

Middle School looked carefully, collaborated and shared that the number line was NOT correct for the reasons including:

1) it was random

2) the numbers were not in even intervals apart from one another 

3) they were not following any times tables either 

 

We also explored blank number lines starting at 0 and ending at a particular number but with different evenly spaced intervals. We have learnt that if there are 10 intervals, you would divide by 10. If there are 5 intervals, you divide by 5. This way, you can work out what the number line is increasing (or decreasing by). 

They were given a numberline starting at 0 with 6 intervals and had to think of different possibilities for the point after 6 intervals. Middle School did amazing! They came up with 6, 12, 24, 30, 42…60, 600, 6000…

Super stars!!

Number lines in M.School