Fan-tastic Numbers

The activities on this page use students’ knowledge of number sequence and order. It is a good idea to model the way you want the students to make and show their numbers. Ensure that they have the fans facing towards themselves when they make the number and that they then turn the fan to face their partner. This ensures that the digits are in the correct order; 24 can easily be made as 42 if the student is not correctly oriented to the fan.
Number fans are a useful warm-up tool to use at the beginning of your maths lesson. Your students can all be engaged in the activity, and you can quickly assess the students’ number knowledge by checking the answers on their fans. Fans can be Material Master 4-10.
A variety of number fans is also available commercially, so it is important to check the exact range of digits printed on them.

Activity One

If the students are having difficulty with this activity, you could use a hundreds board or a thousands book (Material Master 4-4 and Material Master 4-7) to find the given number and, from there, follow the instruction, for example, 10 more. This will help to make the links for the students as they work with larger, less familiar numbers. Counting together as a class in 10s and 100s from numbers such as 34 or 289 will also help the students with this activity.
 

Activity Two

Initially, the students could follow the format of Activity One to design their questions. Ensure that their range of numbers extends to 999 and includes 10 more, 10 less, 100 more, and 100 less. As an extension, the students could use number fans to show their answers to strategy questions as well as knowledge questions. They could do this by exploring how to find other fractions of numbers. For example, you could tell the students to make the number that is 1/4 of 8 , 1/3 of 24, and so on.
They could write word problems in a context relating to themselves, their interests, or the class theme or topic. For example: Room 12 had 36 students. Half the students own a dog. How many students in Room 12 own a dog?
 

Answers to Activity

Activity One
1. a. Any of the numbers 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69
b. Any of the numbers 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129
c. Any of the numbers 168, 169, 170, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176
d. Any of the numbers 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84
2. a. 46
b. 90
c. 79
d. 140
3a. 34
b. 12
c. 156
d. 197
4. a. 6
b. 8
c. 10
d. 12
5. a. 26
b. 12
c. 40
d. 64
6. a. 34
b. 86
c. 102
d. 48
Activity Two
Practical activity