Planning tool

Students:

• distinguish between certain and impossible events
• use the language of chance to describe and explain predictions
• classify a list of everyday events by their likelihood of occurring.

Some students may:

• be still developing their language skills and not understand the language of chance enough to be able to then relate it to the likelihood of an event occurring
• tend to believe in luck (e.g. they will have a better chance at rolling their favourite numbers)
• make predictions based on likes and interests (e.g. their favourite colours for spinners)
• not realise that chance has no memory (e.g. if a student has rolled four sixes in a row, they often believe the fifth roll cannot possibly be another six).

To address these, ask students to play and create games linked with chance. This will encourage students to use the language of chance, test their findings, record the results and make generalisations. Students also need to experience playing unfair games.

The Learning from home activities are designed to be used flexibly by teachers, parents and carers, as well as the students themselves. They can be used in a number of ways including to consolidate and extend learning done at school or for home schooling.

Learning intention

• We are learning that everyday chance situations can be described using chance vocabulary.

Why are we learning about this?

• We are learning to identify outcomes of familiar events involving chance.

What to do

Make a list of activities that could, will, won’t happen or might happen after school today. You also need to explain why. They could include activities like:

• riding a bike
• doing my homework
• watching television
• doing the dishes
• going to the movies
• playing outside.

Success criteria

I can:

• identify everyday chance situations and describe them using chance vocabulary
• use chance terms to describe the likelihood of events happening.