Thepipbuzz

In Early Level 4 Maths Strand - we have been learning about co-ordinates and position.  We used ourselves as co-ordinate points to understand positive and negative points in a grid... then we got to play Battleships on a 4 way grid to challenge ourselves. We ruled up a grid for ourselves and one to find our buddies ships.  We hid our grids from each other and attempted to use our new co-ordinate learning. We all said that we had to remember to use the horizontal line first... "go along the hallway, then up or down the stairs".  This helped most of us to get a hit on at least one battleship!!

Today in Koka Ngaire's Early Level 3 maths workshop we were helping each other out with improper & proper fractions and mixed numbers. We had previously figured out that we had to use multiplication and division to change these fractions.  Bjorn had worked these out and shared them with us, sort of like a 3 step process.  He made them really simple and was great at explaining them to us.  Natalie had been away for a week - so we all helped her to be successful and this made it cement in our brains too! Koka Ngaire gets excited when she sees us automatically helping each other to learn!  We told her she could go and have a coffee because we were so in to our maths learning today!  

Today one of our groups of young mathematicians collaborated in solving a problem so that Marama knew how much money she needed to save before going on her big OE. What was and always is incredible to see, is the variety of strategies that we all use and can explain to others so, like all good mathematicians, we can double-check our answers. After we solved the problem, we explained our methods to each other and pointed out where some of us made mistakes.  Post problem discussion: "It's OK to make mistakes, because we can learn lessons from them." "I didn't get that. Can someone explain how they solved it?" "What did I do wrong?" "That was easy.... I just solved it in my head." "Can I use a calculator?"

It's always great when you grasp a new strategy - especially in maths! Today Koka Ngaire sat on the floor while Felix took us through his understanding of our new strategy to add fractions that have uncommon denominators . He followed all the steps to success and could clearly explain what he was doing... a great example of sharing with others, cements your own learning ! Ka pai Felix! 

As part of our Early Level 4 maths group, we have been learning about Transformations (Geometry/Position): Translate = slide it, Reflect = flip it, Rotate = turn it.   This work has led nicely into some marvellous work on tessellations and learning about different kids of shapes. We learnt that tessellations are shapes locked together with no overlapping... and that it is harder than it looks to complete! There has been LOTS of thinking, practicing, making changes, counting and discussion.  We have had to visualise how the shapes would fit together and have been identifying and explaining the transformations we have been using. We are pretty proud of our efforts - what do you think?

We have learnt about Matariki this week... have a look at our Maths challenges for Matariki.  We are pretty proud of the results!

Measuring & discussing Koka Ngaire's Early Level 4 mathematicians had a challenge today... to work in teams of four, to create triangles of different measurements and make them fit neatly together in a square! We had to check the measurements from the model - discovering that 100mm is NOT the same as 100cm!! We had lots of discussion amongst our groups; talking about the triangles, the measurements and how they would all fit together. At the end we shared with each other what we found tricky and how we problem solved... Success!  The finished products Koka Ngaire has a harder challenge for us on Thursday - we wonder what that will be?!

Koka Ngaire posted this so that we could use it as a teaching/learning tool to: - look at what our Prove It evidence should look like and sound like - use our steps to success for writing a quality blog comment Hi, I have been working on a  Prove It for Maths from my Level 3 workshop. The WALT was: learning to solve multiplication questions in parts