Each week this term Room 3 have used a Thinkers Key to look at Australian products or icons. So far they have invented a machine to ice lamingtons (which we are only willing to claim are Australasian), found new uses for a Kylie Minogue record, found strategies to weigh Uluru (some great ideas though often Uluru was not left intact ;-s ) and creatively combined an old Holden and an iceblock. Last week they used the disadvantages key to look at the Hill's hoist clothesline..Perhaps Lance Hill was Australia's equivalent to Merv Hicks from Eltham. Chocolate fish to the first non NZ'er to tell us what Merv is famous for. Here is Room 3's latest work. Click here to see full size at the voicethread website. We'd love to have some comments.
This week one of our maths groups has been working on finding rules for patterns. They understand that the letter in an algebraic equation is the 'variable' and can be replaced with anything...They are getting very quick at working out some very complicated formulas for patterns they have created themselves. Watch this space...they will be here to write or talk about it on Monday. Unfortunately we lost the internet on Friday so I am posting from home.
Last week the class used Tony Ryan's Alternative Uses Key to come up with 10 different uses for a Kylie Minogue record...here is a selection of their ideas.
We work in groups often in room 3...this helps those more able students to cement their learning and scaffold others who may need more assistance. Lucy, Jack and Tyler are working to solve a maths problem....where do you put the + signs between 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 and 1 to = 99.....? They solved it two ways...can you?
We have been lucky enough to have Libby from Project Energise working with us at Otewa to help build our fitness for the upcoming Small Schools Cross Country against Maihiihi. We challenge them every year to try and get the boot off us..we are determined to keep it again this year. Two weeks of training left and we wish the rain would go away.
Today our maths group was down with Miss Wesley and we were learning about algebra. We were working out of a figure-it-out book. We are looking at triangular numbers and how to find out the formula that would give us the answer no matter how big the base of the triangle is. Sometimes it's easier to use 'x' or another letter in the equation to represent a number. This number is called a variable.
