Thursday 31 May 2018

Sports Day

The wet weather didn't stop us enjoying ourselves!

All sorts of hexagons

Children often think of a hexagon as being this:
However, there are lots of other hexagons. They don't have to be regular, as long as they have six sides. We set out to find as many as we could using just two pattern blocks. Look at all the ones we found!
The children did really well:

Getting hands on and specific; trying things out, even when you've no idea to start with.
Working within a constraint towards a target.
Learning from others but also trying new things.
Finding systematic ways to explore a possibility space.
Disrupting successful ways, to see if there's another way.
Thinking about and discussing what counts as same (rotations, reflections, different ways of constructing).
Getting used to the idea of "finding all the ways".
Seeing how 2 sides join to sometimes make two sides, sometimes one.

We found 17 ways of making a hexagon with two shapes:

Race to 100

Games are often a really great way to gain understanding in maths. Today, we've been playing Race to 100. The children rolled two dice. If they rolled a 2 and a 3, they could either put 2 threes on the track or 3 twos. Really good for gaining physical experience of multiplication!

On the Ning Nang Nong

We're beginning to get to know this song:



Friday 25 May 2018

Recycled instruments

Look at these instruments from recycled materials!

Poetry in K3



In literacy, the children  focused their inquiry around poetry.
We looked at various poems about ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’.
The children wrote a class poem followed by writing their own
‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ poem.


Thursday 24 May 2018

Hexagons and triangles

This week we've been thinking about shapes.

First, the question, 'What other ways can you make the small yellow hexagon? Can you find all the ways?'


We all found lots of ways, and quite a few of us found that there are nine different ways!

Next we had a look at this shape, and asked, "If the white triangle is 1, what other numbers can you see?"
We used the pattern blocks to help us work it all out: