Over the past few years Easy Peasy has been working to open up the processes of maths through the use of uncomplicated, consistent on-screen displays, designed to show how the four operations work in accessible ways.
These latest titles continue that development, providing resources that pull apart multiplication and division and show how they work in a graphical way.
Both titles can be used for whole-class teaching with a whiteboard, or individual reinforcement and exploration by pupils at separate machines. Each has two sections – one to explore the concepts and processes involved, the other to test whether these have been understood. The record-keeping option helps to keep track of which calculations individuals have attempted, and how successful they were.
Multiplication Exploded offers two ways of looking at this particular operation, either in the standard layout, with one number above the other and lines beneath for working out the answer, or as a grid.
In this latter format each number is broken down into the segments of its place value, so 756 becomes, 700, 50, 6. These align with the sides of a table so each part can be calculated separately then added together, a well used method for such calculations which is easier to understand than the standard algorithm. In either view, numbers can be further broken down into their factors with a handy, on-screen hammer, then rearranged and multiplied together to find the answers. Each line can then be added by dragging the different sections on to one another to find the totals.
Plenty of ways to explore
There are even more ways of working on the division CD, including a standard display, chunks, multiples, a number line, arrays of integers, and a section to literally share out the numbers. Plenty of ways of exploring just what division means, and more. With these tools you can easily explore place value, factors, and multiples, with a couple of limitations.
There is no decimal point, so calculations are only to whole numbers, with all answers being exact or having remainders. Similarly, there is no way of dividing a number by one larger than itself. The software also sometimes stops you from getting things wrong, thus preventing experimentation, or when in test mode helps you to work it out, but again without necessarily being able to see where you are going wrong. The record-keeping section records how many attempts students took to get it right, but not the errors, so while you can see what they are getting wrong you don’t get any insight as to why.
There are options for personalising the work, because all the worksheets can be easily edited in a word-processor, or even new ones created. However, there is no easy way of assigning particular sums to particular pupils within the software.
Overall, these latest offerings from Easy Peasy continue to open up the principles of mathematics for pupils learning both its concepts and processes. These are very useful tools; with a couple more developments they could be even more so.
Division Exploded
Multiplication Exploded
Maths software from Easy Peasy Maths, from £39.50
www.easypeasy.co.uk
