ABSTRACT
Clouds and blobs (or blots) can be used on number lines and number grids. They can also be used to obscure parts of calculations and word problems. Clouds and blobs can be as large or small as liked, but should, initially at least, obscure only a small part of the grid. The initial teaching point is to look at the visible parts of the grid and read the grid together with the children. Show them how to use what we know about the structure of the grid to work out the numbers that have been obscured. You can create opportunities in group follow-up work for the children to tackle different levels of difficulty, and give a different focus to different groups of children. One group could uncover blots on a number grid while others could
look at numbers relating to operations, or specific numbers in written algorithms or in word problems.
