Summer SAVY 2016 (Session 5, Day 3) – Secrets of the Moli Stone
Dear Families,
We are flying through the week! Today, we played a game where the goal was to make the largest two-digit number when selecting three cards from a pile that contain the numerals 0-9. Students wrote down and revised their strategies as their played against their classmates. The strategies that students used highlighted their growing understanding of a place value number system; however, we still have some questions about the meaning of 0. Tomorrow we will further investigate the different meanings that 0 takes on in our number system. Does it always mean “none” and “none of what?”
We also were introduced to a number system from Ancient Egypt. Students looked for patterns in the Egyptian numbers as they tried to match each Egyptian number to the corresponding number in our number system. By working across these number systems, students discovered the value of each Egyptian symbols. We were surprised that unlike our number system, the Ancient Egyptian system can have very large numbers represented by just one character. We ended with another musing about 0—the Egyptian system doesn’t use any 0’s! We are also wondering right now why that might be the case.
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