Day 14: Snowflakes

Paper snowflakes. A Mathsmas essential. My snowflake-making craft has improved significantly since the advent of Mathsmas. Largely through lessons learnt from "Make your own paper snowflakes", which I bought as a gift for a colleague then shamelessly borrowed and used extensively. Did you know they are supposed to be hexagon-based? You probably did. I didn't.

So I did a worksheet all those years ago with a cloze passage, some facts, symmetry, and folding based on working out the angle to fold it on. Here it is.

Of course there are other cool snowflakes to make, like these twisty paper ones. For me, the little snips and cuts and experimentation of the traditional ones has a certain feel to it.

Some more foldables

From year 7, Angles and Shapes topic:
 

And some types of triangle - sorry for the bad photos!

Paddlepop Stick Angles

I was inspired by a pin of a poster of angle types made from paddle-pop sticks.

Rather than making a poster each I decided to finally make some use of the string across my room. So they made one definition each and I made a title.

This was done in our first double-period on this topic, which was spent mostly reviewing types of angles, learning naming conventions for angles, and estimating and measuring angles. Oh and complimentary and supplementary angles. It was a busy time. We will probably add more diagrams when we do angles in parallel lines.

Thoughts for next time:

• Leave more time. Craft always takes longer than I think!
• Have more glue. It is hard to share around two glue bottles among 20 kids.
• Punch holes in card first, so the holes don't go through their writing.
• Do a demonstration one, largely to point out what size to write so that it is visible.
• Check spelling!

Another Pin down!!

A Growing Addiction

The time that Pinterest is absorbing in my life continues to grow, so I need to resolve to actually use some of these ideas. I want to acutally use this pinboard as a working space of teaching ideas. Add things, but also use them and remove them. I'm determined to do what I can and adapt lots of the fun primary ideas I find to my classes.

Of course some great ideas just don't come at the right time, and will have to wait. I won't teach symmetry or time again until next year, for example. 

So I have started by printing out the comics I'd gathered, laminating them and adding them to the comics section of my classroom.

Year 7 start "Angles and Shapes" next week, so I think I'll get some paddle-pop sticks and have a go at these as posters:

Year 10 after their exam next week will be doing some algebra that includes indices (I think - I haven't planned that far ahead!). I've been considering with some classes that we do too much teaching that is one topic per lesson then move on rather than frequently returning to the ideas and mixing things up more. I'm considering adapting this idea to index laws:

The centre could be a term in index form, and the categories could be multiplication, division and powers of powers (where they write a question that gives that answer) and expanded form. Maybe if the powers are lowish they could also have a substitution category where they pick a value for the pronumeral and evaluate the term. Then we could do one per lesson as we finish the topic and then later when we are revising.

Grids

The add to 10 and 100 grids came from Counting On, originally, and I use them in my Peer Numeracy roll call. In add to 10 you cross off pairs of numbers that total 10 (anywhere on the grid) and at the end there will be one number left - the solution to that grid. In add to 100 you circle pairs or sets of three numbers (adjacent this time) that total exactly 100.

Other versions I've made include complementary and supplementary angles, and equivalent fractions.

I like these grid activities when I want something more puzzle-like, but still easy and still in-your-seat for groups that struggle with less-structured or more complicated games.

AngleJack and other games with a Deck of Angles

Ok so bear with me here, I might rant. I got a bit excited about this one.

I found a piece of paper on which I had scribbled the idea of a game of making shapes out of angle cards, to practise angle sums of triangle and quadrilaterals (there is a post still to come about another game on this topic I made earlier). I made a test deck and started to play with the idea.

Basically the deck is angles in increments of 10 up to 170 degrees. There are more of the ones from 10 to 90 to provide more balance in the games. My first version of the deck only had the numbers, except for right angles which had a diagram only, but I'll add diagrams to them all (Firstlyl to remind them that they are combining angles, not just numbers, and secondly in the hope of subconsciously familiarising them with size of angles to help them visualise and estimate in future). The games focus on combining angles into right angles, straight lines, revolutions, complementary and supplementary pairs, triangles, and quadrilaterals.

Here are some ideas:

• Go fish with complementary or supplementary pairs. Seemed quite successful in the playtest with year 10 at the end of term. The kids these days seem to really like go fish. Low on strategy, but easy to explain and get going.
• Snap with complements and supplements. Never as good because a difference in skill swings the game a lot but always popular with some groups.
• AngleJack (or Revolution). I was inspired to create Blackjack-style games by this one for negative numbers and also the fact that some students seem to know this game idea quite well. Instead of 21, the aim is to get as close to a revolution as possible (optional - without going over). Can be adapted to getting as close to a straight line as possible but you need to be allowed to go over (or remove the cards above 90), otherwise you can go bust as soon as you start. This was our favourite at home (I have the best, most tolerant boyfriend!)
• Texas Hold 'em Angles - still some fine details to work out, including rankings and the tricky "betting" thing. But basically two cards in hand, five face up, from which the players have to make the best "hand" they can by combing the cards. So far the ranking of combinations is quadrilateral, triangle, revolution, straight line, supplementary, complementary. (Even though a supplementary pair should be less common than a straight line made of any number of angles, there is more thinking involved in the latter, so I ranked it higher). I think to split within the levels, the largest unique angle wins. I did contemplate introducing suits or colours of some kind but I think it's unneccessary. Not sure what the suits would have been but I do like the idea of someone anouncing "quadrilateral of abacuses" or something.
• My original one was a Numero-ish game where each player has a hand of 5 and the table has 5 cards face up. On your turn, you combine cards from your hand with one from the table to make a triangle or quadrilateral to put into your pile. Replenish hand and table. Most cards in pile at the end wins (therefore quadrilaterals are worth more, which is fair, they require more thought). Could also be allowed to make supplementary and complementary pairs to keep the game going.
• At a lower level, the cards could also be all spread out and players take turns to make and take a quadrilateral or triangle (or whatever else mentioned above).
• We also pondered the idea of a Scrabble-like board where you play your triangle or quadrilateral onto one already on the board, using one of their angles. This will take some more thinking about! (And probably the kids would think we had gone insane)

Heaps of thanks to Michael and Bennie for developing these ideas with me.