Mult-e-Maths



Using a calendar 4MEA9

National curriculum objective

Pupils should be taught to:

• solve problems involving converting from hours to minutes; minutes to seconds; years to months; weeks to days.

Prior knowledge and skills

• Understand the meaning of ‘day’, ‘week’, ‘month’, ‘year’.

• Know the months of the year in order.

Vocabulary

calendar, January, February, (etc.), Monday, Tuesday, (etc.), day, week, year, leap year, date, birthday, oldest, youngest

Resources

• calendars for the current year for each pair

• set of month cards for each pair, cut from Resource sheet 1

• set of 1st, 2nd, (etc.), cards for each pair, cut from Resource sheet 2

• small whiteboards and pens

Oral and mental starter

Ask questions about days, months and seasons, e.g.

Q What month is in the summer and has 6 letters in its name?

If today is Monday, what day was it 3 days ago?

Main teaching activity

Whole class

Show pages from a typical calendar for the current year. Discuss the features of a calendar.

Q What information does a calendar display?

What do people use calendars for?

Why is there usually blank space available for each day? (so you can record events to remember, e.g. family birthdays)

Establish, by looking at calendar pages for various months, that different months have different numbers of days.

Q Does anyone know a way of remembering how many days there are in each month?

Say the following rhyme several times to help pupils to remember how many days there are in each month. Encourage pupils to join in:

30 days have September,

April, June and November.

All the rest have 31

Except February alone,

Which has 28 days clear

And 29 in each leap year.

Explain that a leap year is a year that has an extra day (366 days instead of 365 days). This happens once every 4 years and the extra day is added onto February. So, February has 29 days in a leap year and 28 days in other years.

Ask pupils if the present year is a leap year.

Q How can you use the calendar to check? (See how many days there are in February.)

(Screens 1–10: Activity 1, Questions 1–10)

Ask questions about the calendar on the board, such as:

Q How many days are there in this month?

How many Fridays are there in this month?

What day of the week will the last day of the month be? Will it be a school day?

Drag the yellow panel on the right-hand side of the screen to the bin to reveal a calendar for the same month (October) but for the next year (2016).

Explain that you will compare the same month from consecutive years. Refer to the new calendar page and ask:

Q How many days are there in this month? Is this the same as for the same month this year? Why?

What day of the week is the last day of the month? Is it the same as for the same month this year?

Establish that every year, the day corresponding to a specific date changes. You could explain that this is because there is not a whole number of weeks in a year.

Move to screen 2 where there are calendar pages for two consecutive months (November and December, 2015). Use the ‘Pen’ tool [pic] to circle a date in each month (try to use significant dates, e.g. Bonfire Night and Boxing Day). Ask pupils to calculate the number of days between the two dates. Discuss pupils’ methods, e.g. finding how many days there are from the first date to the end of the month, and then adding on the numerical part of the second date.

Repeat the activity for other pairs of calendar pages, using screens 3–10) allowing pupils to practise counting in days, weeks and months. Screen 10 contains two blank calendars; use the ‘Pen’ tool to enter the dates of two months of your choice.

Groups

Give each small group a copy of the current year’s calendar and ask pupils to compare their birthday dates. They find out whose birthday comes first and then use the calendar to work out how many days are between each of their birthdays, ending with the latest birthday in the year.

Q Who is the oldest pupil? and the youngest pupil? How do you know?

Which season is each of your birthdays in?

How many days are there between the 1st and 3rd birthdays in the year?

Pairs

Give each pair a pack of cards with the names of the months on (from Resource sheet 1) and a pack of cards with 1st, 2nd, etc. on (from Resource sheet 2). Ask pupils to shuffle the packs and place them face down on the table. They take turns to each pick up two months and two ‘days’ to make two dates. They can choose which day to put with which month.

The object of the game is to make two dates with as little time between them as possible. The person who has the least number of days between their two dates scores a point. Pupils keep playing the game until one of them wins by scoring 10 points. Pupils could use calendars to help them if they need to.

Q What is the quickest way to determine the length of time between two dates?

If you had the months June and July and the days 1st and 28th, which month would you put with which day and why?

Support: Give pupils a limited amount of month cards so that the length of time between the dates cannot get too large.

Extension: Challenge pupils to play the game without a calendar for reference.

Other tasks

You could ask pupils to:

• find out when our modern calendar was first used.

• research where the names of the months come from.

Review

Whole class

Ask a variety of questions about time intervals, e.g.

Q How many days is it from March 19th to April 4th?

What date is 1 week before June 3rd?

What date is 4 weeks after June 3rd?

Pupils show their answers on small whiteboards. Encourage them to find their answers mentally or mentally with jottings before checking using the current year’s calendar to check.

Discuss pupil’s mental methods. Use real calendars or whiteboard pages, as appropriate, to clarify answers.

Key idea and assessment

A calendar helps us to find out information about a given month and to compare dates.

Can pupils:

• describe the key features of a calendar?

• calculate lengths of time between dates?

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