BEAM

BEAM is short for BEing A Mathematician. It developed out of one of the ILEA maths centres and was taken over by Islington LEA when ILEA was abolished. BEAM is now self-financing and has moved to new premises.

They run courses for primary teachers on maths, provide consultants to run school based training and produce resources and books for teachers.

Croydon has a BEAM Trialling group. (Click to find out more). Teachers who participate in this group get the opportunity to preview new BEAM materials before they are published and try them out with their classes. All teachers who trial out an activity and send the evaluation sheet into BEAM get a free copy of the book, when it is published.

As a group we also write new materials ourselves. Our first book was "Starting from Big Numbers" (ISBN 1 874099 66 2). We then wrote the first Mathematical Calendar for KS1. This idea has been repeated and extended and there are now many more mathematical calendars suitable for younger children. Our latest book hasn't been published yet but is activities related to dominoes, which could be done in school or sent home for children to play with their families.

Worms

For 2 players aged 6 - 7 yrs

You need: Normal set of dominoes

	Make a worm using 4 dominoes
	Each worm must have 24 dots in total
	Pick another 4 dominoes and make another worm.

e.g.

Questions

	How many different worms can you make?
	Is there a quick way of counting dots?
	Have you used doubles?

Variations

	Make worms of any length but only 24 dots.
	Make other 4 domino worms, investigate the different totals.

Written by Rosemary Hafeez, Mathematics Adviser, Croydon

Matching Fractions

For 2 - 4 players aged 10-11 yrs.

You need: double 12 dominos

Share the dominoes equally among players.

Players take it in turn to play a tile.

Tiles must match as equivalent fractions.

e.g.

2/6 1/3 4/12

The aim is to get rid of all dominoes.

Any that can’t be played count as a negative score

eg.

1/7

Questions

Which dominoes can you not get rid of ? Why?

Rules

	Each player starts with 10 dominoes.
	The overall winner is the player who loses least.

Variations

	To simplify, use double 6 or double 9 sets of dominoes.
	To extend, use improper fractions.

Written by Nikki Aduba, formally of Byron Junior School, Croydon

You can contact BEAM at

BEAM Education, Maze Workshops, 72a Southgate Road, London N1 3JT

email : beam@rmplc.co.uk

web site: http://www.beam.co.uk