Lesson video

Hi, welcome to your maths lesson with me, Mrs Harris.

Now this lesson is a bit of a different one, because really I'm just going to be giving you lots of ideas that you can do in your play to help you improve four very, very important skills.

Now, these skills are going to help you with your maths, not just today, but forever.

Whenever you do maths in the future, these four skills are going to set you up really good because they're going to help you think about identifying and describing relationships.

So, let's find out what these skills are.

Can you see our four skills? We have classifying, matching, comparing, and ordering.

And I've broken the lesson up so that we look at each one of them in turn.

Now we know what we're going to do and what our four skills are today.

Let's have a look what we're going to need.

Ah, the only thing we need today is you.

Are you here? You are, aren't you? So we don't need to pause the video.

We can get straight on with learning about our first skill, which was classifying.

So classifying is a way of sorting things.

And we're going to take a look at ways we could classify, sort objects.

The first way of sorting things is when things are in a terrible muddle.

Imagine a really messy room.

Yours isn't like that, is it? But if you needed to have a little tidy up, after you'd had a jolly good play, you could maybe do some sorting.

I've done some sorting here.

Look, I've put my conkers together.

I do love going to find some natural things outside.

I could have found some pebbles instead.

But I've got conkers.

So I put all my conkers together.

Then I decided to put all my leaves together.

Leaves aren't the same as conkers, are they? Then I put my LEGO together.

You had to pick all the LEGO up.

Put all the LEGO together because, well, it's not the same as conkers and it's not the same as leaves.

I thought that should all go with the other LEGO really.

Do you agree? And then, well, I've started to make a group of cars, but I could only find one, but I didn't want to put him with the conkers, or the leaves, or the LEGO.

So I'll pop that car by itself.

I quite enjoyed sorting things into what they are and keeping them separate.

But then I decided to challenge myself.

Do you love a challenge? I do love using my brain to think in different ways.

So I decided I put my conkers and my leaves together, and that's because they all grow on trees.

But LEGO doesn't grow on trees, does it? And well, cars, they don't grow on trees.

And as I was putting them together, found a spoon as well.

So I put that with the LEGO and the car because spoons don't grow on trees.

So I sorted them, and I told you how I sorted them.

And you can sort your objects, classify them any way you like, as long as you can explain it.

I always find tidy up time is a great time to do that.

There is another way of sorting though, and we can sort to form sets.

Look, here's all my vehicles.

I do like playing with a toy vehicle, going round the town map, doing the shopping, seeing which one's quicker.

And I've decided to sort them out.

And look, in my circle I've got a red motorbike and a red lorry.

I think there's one other thing that could go in there.

What do you think it could be? Oh, the red car.

I'm not going to settle for that.

I agree, it should be the red car.

But can you tell me why I should put the red car in there, in the circle with the red bike and the red lorry? Yes, the red car goes in there because I've been sorting my objects by colour, my vehicles by colour, and in my sorted circle I have red vehicles.

Good job, if you told me that.

You're getting really good at identifying things.

I decided I didn't really want them sorted into red vehicles.

So I've sorted them another way.

How have I sorted them this time? And what's missing? I think I need another thing in my sorting circle.

I'm not going to tell you what it is.

I'm not going to let you just say what it is.

I'd like you to tell me what one other vehicle goes in my sorting hoop and why.

I'm going to give you five seconds to think.

What goes in my sorting circle and why? Hm, it is.

It's the yellow motorbike because I've sorted the vehicles by type this time.

I'm trying to put all my motorbikes together.

Great noticing.

You could be a detective.

Well, we've already done one of our skills, tick.

We know how to do classifying, and you are going to practise it, aren't you? Good.

So our next skill then is matching.

And I love matching.

Matching is great for playing games.

I've popped four ideas on the screen.

You could play dominoes or snap.

You could maybe play pairs, or do some jigsaw puzzles.

That sounds great.

You may have some other games at home that are great for improving our matching skills.

The first is, well, you might have a game of pairs where you have to try and turn over two cards that are the same.

And if they're the same, you get to keep them.

If you've got that, that's a great game for matching.

Or you might know how to place snap with some playing cards like these.

Now, the only tricky thing about playing snap is in a deck of cards there's actually only one of each type of card.

But you can match it to a partner that is very, very similar.

So if I was playing snap and I put down this card, and my partner or somebody else I was playing with, you could play with lots of people, puts down this card, we would say "Snap." They don't match because they're the same, but they match because they have the same number of pictures on.

And look, the pictures, although they're a different colour and a different shape, are in the same pattern.

So we would say, "Snap." And then I'd get to keep them, and all the ones that went before them.

If I had this one and this one, well, they're the same suit.

They're the same picture, aren't they? But they're not the same pattern, so I can't say, "Snap." But if this one came out, look, although they're different colours, although they're different pictures, different suits, they have the same pattern, and I could say, can you say it with me? "Snap." And I would get to keep them.

Now a set of cards, a deck of cards I should say, are great for playing snap, but they're also really good if you wanted to go back and have a look at your sorting skills as well.

You could pop the cards into suits or match the patterns on them.

You could even sort them by colour.

So this playing with a deck of cards would really help you not just improve your matching skills, but your classifying skills as well.

One of the games I said was dominoes.

And maybe you've got some at home.

Maybe you've got some like these ones with the pips on.

That's the spots that represent numbers.

It doesn't matter if you don't know the numbers yet.

You can simply match the pips, match the spots like I am.

I put them two together because they're the same where they meet.

But they're not the same on these edges, are they? They don't match.

But when I play dominoes, I then find another one that does match to there.

So, maybe you could play dominoes with someone at home if you have a set like this.

Or maybe you're lucky enough to have a set like that, that have pictures of animals that you could match as well.

Dominoes is a super game for matching.

If you like a challenge, and I know I do, you could try doing a jigsaw puzzle, like my one here, to improve your matching skills.

Now, when we do a jigsaw puzzle, we don't just try to match the pictures on the box.

We have to try and match the pieces together as well with their sticky out bits and their cut out bits to try and make that picture.

So jigsaws are great for improving our matching skills.

There is one more type of matching though, and it's where we try to match related objects together.

Now I have made you a little game that I'll show you in a minute.

But first of all, my friend here, maybe he would have been good at playing snap.

He'd like to play a little game with me on related objects.

Now I'm going to say something and then he's going to say something related to it.

And then I have to say something related to that.

And we keep going till one of us can't think of something.

Shall I show you? Socks, shoes, feet, running, walking, jogging, skipping, dancing, music, singing, songs, tunes.

Oh, I couldn't think of anything.

But we had associated lots and lots of items together.

I've got a little job for you to do now.

It won't take you long, don't worry.

In a minute I'd like you to pause the video and look at the pictures on the screen.

Your job is to make a relationship between two of the pictures.

They're things that go together, but they're not exactly the same as each other, they would just maybe be used together, and you make relationships between them, links between them.

Let me tell you my one.

Socks and shoes.

Pause the video now, see which ones you can see, and then come back to me and I'll tell you all the ones I found.

Okay, let me tell you the links I made.

Maybe you made different ones.

And as long as you can explain why you put them together, that's fine.

So I told you I had socks and shoes.

The next one I made was table and chair.

You use the chair to sit at the table, don't you? Then I had a look around.

I saw a cup of tea and biscuits.

That's one of my favourites.

A knife and fork.

Hat and scarf.

Ah, umbrella and rain.

We'd use the umbrella in the rain.

And that just leaves me one last one, jelly and ice cream.

Mm, mm, mm.

Well done, and thank you for playing my game.

We've lots of ideas for matching games now.

Now let me tell you some ideas for comparing.

Now, when we compare things, we definitely need more than one of something.

Take a look at my flowers.

I've been growing some beautiful roses.

Look, they're all in different colour pots.

We've got a yellow pot, a pink pot, a purple pot, a green pot, and a blue pot.

Look, my roses, are they all the same size? No, they're not, are they? We can compare them by size because there's lots of them.

We can say that the first rose, we'll call it the yellow rose 'cause it's in the yellow pot, the yellow rose is shorter than the pink rose.

But we could say the pink rose is taller than the yellow rose.

What could we say about the purple rose? How is it in relation to the pink rose? Is it taller than the pink rose or shorter than the pink rose? That's right, the purple rose is shorter than the pink rose.

Did you see how I put that all in a sentence? I didn't just say, "Mrs. Harris, it's shorter." Or I didn't just say, "Shorter." I said a whole sentence.

The purple rose is shorter than the pink rose.

Let's try that again with the green rose.

Is the green rose taller or shorter than the purple rose? Oh, there's no tricking you, it is? The green rose is the same size as the purple rose.

Well done.

And especially a big done if you put it in a sentence.

Okay, last one.

This one is enormous.

This rose just kept on growing, and growing, and growing.

So what are we going to say about the blue rose? Let's think about the green rose that came before it.

The blue rose is taller than the green rose.

That's a great sentence.

And we could also say that the blue rose is the tallest.

If the blue rose is the tallest, which is the shortest? Shortest is the opposite to tallest, isn't it? That's right.

The yellow rose is the shortest.

Now I couldn't really think of any comparing games, but I think you can make comparisons at home with anything you've got.

Next job we're going to do, and it is our fourth and final skill, is we going to do some ordering.

We can order objects in a couple of ways.

We could order them by their size.

Look at my pencils.

They have not really been ordered by size.

Not consistently.

We have got them going from short to tall, back down to short, to tall again.

I much prefer it when my ordering goes in one way or the other.

Here, my pencils and pens are ordered from shortest to tallest, smallest to biggest.

I could change it round and I could say that this time I've ordered them from biggest to shortest, biggest to smallest.

Can you see how my ordering is a little clearer and more consistent than the ordering above me? And you can order anything.

You can order your teddy bears.

You could order your chips at teatime.

You could order the people in your house by their height, couldn't you? So we can do lots of ordering by size.

The other sort of ordering we can do is ordering sets.

Look, I've done some sorting.

I've put my blue blocks together, my yellow blocks together, and my red blocks together.

But because I've lined them up like this you can see quite clearly I have more blue blocks than I do red blocks.

I have more blue blocks than I do yellow blocks as well, don't I? And more yellow blocks than I do red blocks.

I've ordered the sets without even counting how many I had.

Wow, that was so much easier.

I also decided to order some cutlery when I was getting ready for dinner.

I've ordered my spoons, my knives, and my forks.

And you can see I've got less spoons than I do knives.

And I've got more forks than I do knives.

I think I might need to get some more out of the drawer so that I end up with an equal amount.

But I haven't counted them at all.

So you can do ordering of sets whenever you like as well.

Well, that was a quick whirlwind tour of our four skills.

Can you remember what they were? We had classifying, we had matching, we had comparing, and we had ordering.

Did you notice that quite a lot of them were quite well linked? They go together really nicely.

And quite often when we play one game, we're practising one of the other skills as well.

So I think you're going to be really great at these four early maths skills of classifying, sorting, matching, comparing, and ordering.

If you have done some great classifying, matching, comparing, or ordering today, maybe you would like to share your work with me on social media, but you can't do it.

You need to ask your parent or carer's permission, and they can do it for you.

They could pop it on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter.

And if they do it on Twitter and tag @OakNational, I'll be sure to see it and see your, what was it? Your classifying, matching, ordering, and comparing.

I got them in the wrong order, but all four are there.

So, bye.