Week 8 - Doubles and the creation of Pixel Art

Kia Ora bloggers,

For the past few weeks, we have been developing our multiplication skills.  This week we have been using our Math skills to create some Pixel art. We have been learning how to enlarge drawings using our knowledge of doubles.  As part of this learning, we have also made a connection between doubles and the 2x tables.

Firstly, we investigated and made connections between the doubles and 2x table facts. You can see this in Daiki's example below.

Then, we worked on this activity.  Mr Riceman showed us how to use doubles to make an enlargement.  This activity is also available on the Math pages of our class site.  If you are up for the challenge there is a help video inside the video that you can use to have a go at creating and enlarging one of these designs too.

During creation time, we had two designs to enlarge.  This was challenging but we were able to use our knowledge of the 2x tables to help us.  Once we were confident with this, we had the chance to create and enlarge our own designs.   You can see examples of Morgan's and Daiki's creations below.

One of Daiki's patterns

One of Morgan's creations

We would love some feedback.  If you have created pixel art, or have any questions, please leave us some positive, thoughtful and helpful feedback.

Week 8 - Zupelz Maths and logic

This term we have been working really hard on our Maths.  We start our math sessions with a warm-up.  This week we shared an investigation to solve a zupelz puzzle. 

We need to use lots of mathematical thinking to solve this.  We can recall combinations that add together to make numbers, understand and identify even and odd numbers then finally, use logic to explain why certain numbers fit in a particular place.  Below you will see our whiteboard discussion about even numbers.  To our maths group the word even means something fair or something that is shared evenly. Our definition of an even number was a number that could be split into two groups and the groups were the same size. You can see how we proved the numbers in the list were even.

Then we had four numbers to organise into the grid.  Each row and column needs to add up to the number on the outside.  We started by placing the number four in the even box.  We then used our knowledge of combinations to place the three and the two in the correct boxes in the grid.  This left us with one digit to place which was one and it only had one place to go.  

We used lots of thinking, discussing and reasoning to solve this with our buddy. Our next challenge is to solve larger grids using the same thinking. We would love some of your positive, thoughtful and helpful feedback about our mathematical thinking.

Investigating Area - Proving ourselves right!

This term, we have been investigating measurement as part of our maths learning.  Earlier in the term we created paper planes and had a competition measuring the length that these could fly.  Over the past two weeks we have again combined our knowledge of flight and flying things to investigate another measurement concept, Area.

Firstly, we identified what we think area is. Our class definition is that 'area is how much it takes to cover something, or how much space to cover something".  Mr Riceman set up an investigation for us to measure how different areas can make different things happen.

We created plastic bag parachutes by recycling old materials. Any leftovers we disposed of responsibly using our soft plastics bin.  Our challenge was to make three parachutes, each with a different area.  We used a you-tube video to get a general idea about how we could build these.  Then, came our chance to create.  While creating, Mr Riceman introduced us to the concepts of variables and scientific testing.  We talked about testing one variable which was the area of the parachute.  To do this we had to keep all the other variables on the parachute as close to the same as we could (e.g. length of string, weight of teddy...)

Once we had made these we then had to test them out fairly. Our hypothesis (what we think will happen) was that a parachute with a larger area would take longer to get to the ground. This is because there is more area in the parachute to catch wind and slow it down.  We did at least three drops of each parachute from the same height and recorded how long it took for these to land.  Here are some videos of the testing phase.

Most of us proved our hypothesis correctly, the larger the area of the parachute, the longer it takes the teddy to land.  It was so much fun putting our ideas about area into real experiments and making something to prove what we thought.  Have you ever experimented with something like this?  We would love your feedback and to hear about any connections you might have to our learning.

Monday Maths Madness

Our week started with a mathematical bang!  We spent our morning block immersed in a range of different math problems.  We split into groups across the senior syndicate and got our brains into gear while we tried to solve a variety of different problems.  Best of all we had loads of equipment to use to investigate and work out these problems.  Here are a few of the action shots from the day.