A New Villain in Agency

Today the Three Headed, Colour Changing Dragon made an appearance.  That is him, hidden under that large question mark.

The idea of this villain is that rather than wreaking havoc with clients, it will set challenges for us to solve.  These challenges will have a lovely strand based link and allow the agents to use visual strategies to solve.  This was his challenge today.

The agents loved this new addition and this challenge worked really well.  Most chose to use popsicle sticks to represent the problem.  They had some initial difficulty when they joined the squares together mean they were sharing sides.

Some chose to draw the squares on their whiteboard (ipad)

This activity was really quick and felt incredibly valuable.  It will be a great link to maths eyes.

Following that we did some work with the dice.

The Knight Adder then paid us a visit and set us the word problem that basically translated to 5 + 4 + 3 =  

The agents used a different range of strategies, but taking into account that most of these children have only had four months or less at school they did incredibly well and showed excellent independence.  They are also getting really good at stating whether they agree or disagree with another's answer and giving a basic explanation for the way they solved it.

This is what our agency wall looks like at the moment...still a few more villains to uncover!