Monthly Archives: July 2017

325. Mrs D’s Delightful Display

Anyone else been purging their classrooms of ragged wall displays ready for a fresh start in September? But then you end up rushing displays ready for the Autumn Y6 open evenings? And you need to get to know your new classes too!

Mrs D had a splendid plan to address all these issues. The first step was to introduce the problem: step through a piece of paper. It’s a classic problem involving maximising perimeter – I remember seeing it in a children’s Annual as ‘The journey through a postcard’.

This isn’t the easiest of tasks and takes a fair bit of determination and patience. Teamwork skills are also helpful. You can really get to know your class with this activity.

Once they’ve figured out how to do this you can reflect on how they overcame obstacles. All of this can be pulled together to make an amazing wall display on problem solving.

Thank you to the excellent Mrs D for allowing me to share her idea!

324. Glamping Gallery 

I’m a hard facts, scientific evidence kinda person. I don’t do New Age aura type stuff. However I could be converted on ‘good karma’. Last September, I spent the morning supporting the local Scout group by litter picking at a Festival. Afterwards I bought one raffle ticket for £1 and was  I was lucky enough to win first prize – a ‘Glamping’ trip. Cleaning up other people’s rubbish won me a holiday!

But this is a Maths blog – surely there is some probability investigation coming next or a comparison of good deeds and good fortune?

Nah – just some holiday pictures of a mathematically pleasing nature. Enjoy!

323. Split book headache 

As we reach the end of term and peruse our new timetables, here is a simple way to keep on top of your books. With the continued belt tightening in the curriculum more of us are sharing classes with colleagues. Do you have one book or two? Should you share a book? Should you keep the books?

How about a bit of funky duck tape? You know I love it!

I’ve put this rather garish tape on the spines of the books so both the students and myself can tell whose book they are. It also reinforces the spines. The Year 8 class thought it was ingenious. My Year 9 class were rather jealous and said they wanted tape too!

(You can get the same effect by wrapping a large sticker around the spine, but it’s not as ‘cool’)

PS That’s not my class size in the picture, before anyone gets jealous. There are 33 of them in total.