A lesson for Year 6 pupils to familiarise themselves with the key features of calculators and encourage appropriate and effective use whilst also exploring and reasoning about key aspects of mathematics.
The activities can be used in isolation or as a whole lesson. A PowerPoint to support the activities is also available to download.
The lesson is focussed on calculation and particularly on developing understanding of multiplicative relationships and how multiplication can be understood as scaling. It also provides opportunities to discuss the interpretation of answers on a calculator and to use rounding skills. There is also a talking point around what we mean by ‘as big as’. Do we mean length, area, mass or something else? Does it make a difference what we compare?
