Factors in Maths and Coding in Hopscotch

One of the concepts in Mathematics in Year 5 that students learn about is factors and multiples.  This is expressed within the National Curriculum within Number and Algebra by this content descriptor:

Identify and describe factors and multiples of whole numbers and use them to solve problems  ACMNA098

The Year 5 students have been exploring a range of digital technologies as part of their recent Geography unit.  The benefit of course, in exploring these technologies, is that they become tools within your toolkit to enable you to explore other curriculum areas. In doing this, teachers are creating opportunities for differentiation, engagement and deeper learning.

The students today created some Hopscotch game all about factors.

What did they learn?

  1. In order to teach something, there is need for deep understanding.  The students were demonstrating their understanding of this mathematical concept but also the skill of decomposition which is a computational thinking concept which means to break things down.
  2.  The students were certainly demonstrating an understanding of algorithms and the abstraction needed to build a game to explore another concept.
  3. They were gaining experience in the process of designing and building a digital game – all of which requires a particular mindset which means they design, trial, debug and gain feedback.   Additionally, they must persevere in order to achieve the result they seek.

Factor Game – 1

Factor Game 2