Day: April 1, 2026

This week, Group 1 got to make a DLO to explain how to work with significant figures in numbers on the DLO. Significant figures are the important digits in a number that show its precision. The resource helps you understand how to keep track of these digits when solving math problems.

The idea is that sometimes you need to show all the significant figures in a number, whether it has one, two, three, four, or five. Doing this makes it easier to work with the number correctly. For example, if you have the number 886,652, and you want to round it to different significant figures:

– To have only 1 significant figure, you look at the first digit and round the number to the nearest hundred thousand, so it becomes 900,000.
– To have 2 significant figures, you keep the first two digits, which are 88, and then round, making it 890,000.
– To have 3 significant figures, keep 888, and the number becomes 887,000.

One interesting fact I learnt was that if I shows these steps clearly, it is making it easier for students to understand how to identify and work with significant figures. Whilst also understanding how to do this is useful because it helps make measurements and calculations more accurate and consistent, especially in math.

This week in math, Group 1 is learning about something called the highest common factor. Basically, the highest common factor is the biggest number that can divide into two or more numbers exactly, without leaving anything left over.

To understand this better, think about what factors are. Factors are numbers that you can multiply together to make a bigger number. For example, if you multiply 6 by 8, you get 48. So, 6 and 8 are factors of 48.

When we talk about the highest common factor of two numbers, we are looking for the biggest number that can fit evenly into both of those numbers. For example, if you look at 12 and 18: the factors of 12 are 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 12; and the factors of 18 are 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 18. The biggest number that appears in both lists is 6. So, the highest common factor of 12 and 18 is 6. This means 6 is the largest number that divides evenly into both 12 and 18.

One interesting fact I learnt was if I taught students and learnt st getting good at finding the highest common factor it helps them to understand how numbers relate to each other and can be useful in many math problems, like simplifying fractions or dividing things into equal parts.

Today for this task we learned about two types of numbers prime numbers and composite numbers. Prime numbers are special because they only have two factors: 1 and the number itself. For example, 3 is a prime number because only 1 and 3 can be multiplied together to make 3. Another example is 5. These numbers can’t be divided evenly by any other numbers except 1 and themselves.

On the other hand, composite numbers are numbers that can be divided evenly by more than just 1 and themselves. This means they have more factors. For example, 6 is a composite number because it can be divided evenly by 1, 2, 3, and 6. Because of this, most even numbers like 4, 6, 8, and 10 are composite numbers. The only even number that is prime is 2, because it only has two factors: 1 and 2. All the other even numbers have more factors, making them composite. Basically, prime numbers are like numbers with only two factors, and composite numbers are like numbers with a bigger group of friends they can be divided by.