A Gap in Knowledge

Back in Term 1 with IKAN testing finished and analysed for gaps in knowledge for the group as a whole, it was time to get into serious teaching. Unexpectedly, Place Value was the largest gap with Basic Facts close by. More on Basic Facts here and later (link retroactively added).

To address the Place Value gap in the higher ability learners, I went back to grouping sticks and recording numbers on a sheet. I made sure to have the learners add on 10 and 100 in the hopes they would notice the jump up in place value of particular numbers.

The task was mildly successful. I noticed about a half of my learners understood quite quickly, whereas the other half or so didn't. In the second week of working on Place Value, I extended those with an understanding to go down into the decimal place values. At the time I had suspicions on how well it was taken up. These suspicions turned out to be true