Teaching Resources

Algebra

The items listed on this page are some examples of the wide range of  activities that are available.  You may also like to explore activities from the websites listed on the websites (algebra) page. 

MAV produced weekly home learning guides to assist teachers to support families with mathematics home learning during 2020. There are three learning levels: F – 2, 3 – 6, and 7 – 9. 

The tasks are a mix of open-ended, rich tasks, challenging tasks and small investigations covering all mathematical content areas.  Scroll through the activity sets to find tasks for algebra.

F - 2 Activities

**NEW** Maths Curriculum Companion - Patterns and Algebra F-2

(Victorian Department of Education and Training)

Provides teaching content, resources and teaching ideas linked to the curriculum.

This resource on NZMaths, it is a great visual way to explore repeating patterns with young children using multi-link cubes and kinda squares.

Read or watch The Magic Pot which explores doubling and use the function machine to explore number patterns. A worksheet that accompanies the story can be found here.

3 - 6 Activities

**NEW** Maths Curriculum Companion - Patterns and Algebra 3-6

(Victorian Department of Education and Training)

Provides teaching content, resources and teaching ideas linked to the curriculum.

This resource was developed by the Australian Catholic University (ACU) for Catholic Education Melbourne as part of the Strategic Support Mathematics and the Contemporary Teaching and Learning (CTLM) professional learning program. These activities were compiled by Matt Sexton and Ann Downton to help children in the middle years explore pattern, equivalence and function.

This resource was developed by the Australian Catholic University (ACU) for Catholic Education Melbourne as part of the Strategic Support Mathematics and the Contemporary Teaching and Learning (CTLM) professional learning program. These senior problems developed by Jill Brown could be used as investigations or assessment to explore the children's grasp of pattern and algebra.

This resource from Mathwire explores the function machine with this pen and paper game.  What is the missing expression?

This resource from Mathwire is used once students have developed conceptual understanding of the basic operations and need to develop fluency with the facts.Give each child an equation.  Begin with anyone and children identify their solution when an equation is read out until you return to the beginning.  

E.g. I have 3N, who is 5 more than a number?  I have b + 5, who is......

Assessment Ideas F-2

These two links could be used as an assessment task: 

Can the children explain and continue the pattern?

Can they generalise? (explain what is happening and make predictions)

What visual tool could they use to track the number of shapes used in the growing number of fish or butterflies (table).  Can they predict the number of shapes for any number of butterflies?

Assessment Ideas 3-6

This middle years task can be used as a pre/post assessment to assess children's  understanding of various number properties, equivalence and relational thinking.