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August 2012
In this month's News you will find:
Maths With Attitude: 2nd Edition
Gold! It's Gold for Potatoes
Professional Development:
Working Mathematically with Infants
From The Classroom x 3
Tasks of the Month
Task 148, McMahon's Triangles 1
Task 180, Making Monuments
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- Gold! It's Gold for Potatoes
I just had to share with you the fun and excitement of Potato Olympics at Mt. Dandenong Primary school over the past few weeks. We have 2 graduate teachers in 3/4 who were very keen to find the 'hook' for their maths activities. So it was decided a bag of potatoes would be a great start and they would take it from there for students to develop and discover the mathematical phenomena in a bag of potatoes. I remembered the 2 big folders of Classroom Connections still in my collection and yes I had the articles you had written on 'Potato Olympics' and other related 'Maths in Potatoes' activities.
The students have had weeks of training, event organising, personal bests, as well as measuring, estimating, sorting and comparing whilst discovering 'Where is the maths?' in potatoes.
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The students have had a ball with our playgrounds and corridors filled with the excitement of events. It also just happened that the same two classes where scheduled to present their class Friday Assemblies, where students from all areas of the school showcase the learning from their level to the whole school.
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One class presented their learning in the form of an Opening Ceremony with a parade of participating potatoes and their flags from each state of Australia with speeches and interviews with coaches about their potatoes. The other class concluded the Potato Olympics yesterday with a closing ceremony with all our award winning potatoes on show. A slide show of the events and medal presentations captured the fun and excitement experienced by all the students.
Sue Gibson (Acting AP)
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Many thanks Sue for taking the time to share this exciting experience. You've gotta love it when the learning comes together like this. Thanks also to your teachers Rosemary Brehaut and Natalie Stratford for doing the hard yards with the children to make it happen. Remember, it might be four years until the next olympics, but the Spudville Athletic Carnival can be an annual event.
- Find more on Potato Olympics, including the article Sue mentions through the Link List below.
- Professional Development: Working Mathematically with Infants
While this eNews was being prepared we had a call from a regional leader wanting to find out more about Working Mathematically with Infants because one of her schools was raving about it. The teachers say it's so well organised and easy to use and the children love it. Perhaps timely then (at least for Victorian teachers) that we are representing the Working Mathematically with Infants workshop day through Critical Agendas on October 29th for K - 2 teachers.
See Link List below for details. If you can't get to Melbourne but you would like us to bring PD to you - anywhere - give us a call to talk about possibilities.
- From The Classroom x 3
Our role is to collect and retell stories of success about students (and teachers perhaps) learning to work like a mathematician. One way to do that is for you to contribute your success stories - those times when your class's learning has really excited you. Many thanks to these three teachers who have done just that and had their story added a From The Classroom section of the relevant task cameo.
- Task 26, Travelling Australia
Gemma Headon, MacKillop College, Swan Hill, developed an extension to this task which includes angles, scale measurement, geography, literacy and international communications when she was working on a project with Eva Larsson's class from Stockholm, Sweden.
- Task 133, Win At The Fair
Robert McGregor, who volunteers his time for an after school mathematics program throught the Dubbo Police Citizens Youth Club has used Win At The Fair in its whole class investigation life and comments on some practical aspects of the lesson.
- Task 180, Making Monuments
Damian Howison, MacKillop College, Swan Hill, has tweaked this relatively straightforward visual algebra task to provide deeper undertanding of hybrid (or step-wise) functions. Damian has provided the slides from his lesson to illustrate his explanation of the this extension. This is a must read for Senior Secondary and University teachers.
Special thanks to Gemma, Robert & Damian for their collegiate approach. See Link List below.
- Tasks of the Month
Two new cameos this month.
- McMahon's Triangles 1 is a logical search for all the ways to colour three sections of an equilateral triangle using four colours. Cleverly, there is no actual time wasted colouring - counters are placed to 'claim' a section as coloured. The outcome of the search shows how the pieces of McMahon's Triangles 2 (#107) were designed and also links the task to Coloured Squares (#112).
- Making Monuments is a story shell about building a tiled monument in the middle of a park and paths with equal size tiles leading up to it from the four points of the compass. It is relatively straightforward on first sight, but opens the door to a great deal of a pattern and algebra work. The cameo is further enhanced by a contribution tweaking the activity to support the topic of functions in senior secondary school.
Click a photo to access its cameo, or access all current cameos through the Link List below.
Keep smiling,
Doug.
Link List
- Did you miss June/July News?
If so you missed information about:
- Maths With Attitude: 2nd Edition
- Latest order form and price DEcrease
- Menu Maths strengthened
- Counter Escape: addition
- Maths300 news
- Iceberg Information about two Tasks of the Month
(Tasks 212, 235)
- ...and more...
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Did You Know?
- You can find tasks coded by Year Level and Curriculum Strand in the Task Centre Catalogue (PDF file).
- The Activities link of Calculating Changes offers Content Finder & Year Level Finder tools.
- Our Site Map acts as a Table of Contents to help you find what you need in Mathematics Centre.
- You can search for lessons by Year Level, Curriculum Strand, Lesson Features & Keyword at Maths300.
- You can connect Tasks to their Maths300 companion lesson using Tasks & Maths300 (a PDF file).
Excel version provided by Pymble Ladies' College
- All these links, and more, appear in Working with Mathematics Centre (a PDF file).
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