Tag Archives: growth mindset

325. Mrs D’s Delightful Display

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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!

152: Sequence Starter 1

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So many people have the preconcieved notion that there is only one right answer to a maths question. This is such a silly idea – they just haven’t had the right question!

Here is a simple starter for introducing term to term sequences.

Equipment
Classroom whiteboard or large sheets of paper
Imagination

Task
Write down the next three terms in the sequence 1, 2 … and the rule used.
Eg: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, …      Add 1
Note: Rules should be one short sentence.

Outcome
My Year 7 were frustrated that I’d given them the obvious answer and was asking for more. After a few minutes adjusting their expectations, they went for it. Some methodically wrote down rules, some abbreviated rules to symbols, some wrote rules and didn’t check them. Some didn’t write rules at all.

I randomly picked pupils to share their ideas on the board. I did the writing as I wanted to control the wording of rules and half of them can’t reach the top of the board.

image

Their sequences were brilliant and very creative. The stumbling block was the rules. They didn’t always work for every term of the sequence. This gave other pupils the opportunity to develop their ideas by improving or adjusting the rules to fit the sequences. We also discussed how many terms you need to make a unique sequence. By the end of the discussion we only had one sequence without a rule. I was really impressed by their numerical skills!

In the subsequent classwork, their solutions were precise and well explained.

We finished with this brain teaser:
1,2,5,10,20,50,100 …

It’s UK currency:
1p,2p,5p,10p … etc