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Warranwood Primary School began the year with a half day workshop exploring ways of broadening the mathematics curriculum. The team thought they were doing well with skill development, but that there was more to maths than that. The focus of the workshop was learning to work like a mathematician in number & algebra and the teaching craft likely to encourage learning. In the first part of the day, as they learnt about:

• Plug Catcher
• Six Plus
• Ten Friends
• Predict A Count

and Calculating Changes from which these all come, they built this record of the teaching craft features embedded in activities that are likely to encourage learning.

Created by Esther Gassmann

This superb example of quilting was photographed in a display at St. John's Uniting Church, Cowes (Australia). Some of the pieces of a 7-piece tangram are used in the design and, apart from the borders, they are the only pieces. The photo was crying out to be included in the Tangram Teasers task and that's where you will find it - in larger size and linked to an even high resolution version you can save for display or projection. (Please acknowledge its creator.) Iceberg questions which encourage digging deeper into the geometry, pattern and number work accessible through the art have been added to the task cameo. Want to see what Tangram Teasers is about and explore these questions or others you might share with us? Start with Get to Know a Cameo below.

In those days 'working like a mathematician' wasn't talked about in those words. However, when, while preparing for a house move last year, I came across Eva's project on De Bono's L Game, I knew immediately that was why I had kept it and indeed exactly what she was doing. I wanted to show others, but apart from my own staff at the time, no one else had seen it. I was rapt to have it in my hands again and with today's WLAM eyes I reviewed it, surrounded it with a few thoughts for today's classrooms and offered it to the editor of Vinculum, the secondary journal of the Mathematical Association of Victoria. It was recently published in issue 1/18, page 20, as Eva's Elsendots.

If you do not receive Vinculum from MAV but this description arouses your interest, please ask and I will send you a copy of the draft.

Task 236, Star Numbers

So attractive and kinaesthetic, this pattern building task begs students to get involved. It soon becomes clear that the construction has two parts and for a Size 10 Star Number the task seems doable, even if only by building and counting. However a mathematician solving a problem has no answers to check against - that's why it's a problem - so the task card ends by shifting the focus to checking another way. In doing so opportunities open and generalisations become tempting. Drawing and journal writing become necessary and ... the problem begins to know no bounds. Helena's remarkable project about Star Numbers (Stjärnor) is included in the cameo.

See Link List below for the Star Numbers cameo.

In the eTask Package, this task is in the 'Easy To Make' category and it is suggested the PDF file provided is printed in colour on white card. If you have Poly Plug, as in the photo, there are good reasons for using the plugs from one set in this task. If you don't, 2 colours of counters, or even 2 colours of screw caps from water bottles will do the job.

Task 79, Tangram Teasers

Over centuries hundreds of shape puzzles have been developed using this 7 piece dissection of a square. The task offers a few and they aren't all straight forward. One of the From The Classroom contributions in the cameo makes that clear. But tangrams offer more than silhouette challenges and the cameo suggests additional challenges investigating angles and polygons, as well as challenges based around area, perimeter and fractions or decimals. See Link List below for the Tangram Teasers cameo.

In the eTask Package, this task is in the 'Easy To Make' category because many schools have one tangram set which would be better used in this task than left in the back of a cupboard. If you don't have such a set, it's still easy to make a set from cardboard or, more permanently, from wood.