Mathematical Geniuses At Work

Problem Solving Friday

Every Friday we do problem solving math relating to what we have been working on during the week

Your Mathematical geniuses are working on division problems.  They are encouraged to represent their understanding by 'show me don't tell me'.

Below are busy minds working out this weeks problems.

Matariki

The Story of Matariki

We have been learning about myths and legends this term.  To tie in with Matariki we focused on retelling the story by creating all the characters using as many natural resources as we could.  

Below is the completed display.  

To see the full display please come and look.  

Flax Weaving

The Year 3 students helped to teach the Year 5 and 6 students how to make Matariki stars out of harakeke (flax).

The Year 6 girls were shown how to cut the flax, ensuring they followed all the Maori protocols for cutting harakeke.

We are learning how to strip the harakeke to prepare it for weaving.

Mrs King showed the Year 6 girls how to begin the star.  It was very tricky, but some of us persevered and succeeded. 

This is all of us completing the star with our Year 3 buddies helping.

We all managed to complete a star of some sorts!!

After we had finished weaving any pieces of harakeke we did not use had to be given back to 

Papatuanuku (our Earth Mother).

We also learnt we are to never step on or over the harakeke.

Flat Stanley

We had a visitor in our class he was all the way from Doha.  His name was Flat Stanley.  We were given the task to have some adventures with Flat Stanley.

This is Flat Stanley.

 

We decided we would teach Flat Stanley how to make Matariki stars out of harakeke (flax) and tell him the story of Matariki.

We took Flat Stanley out to help us cut harakeke.  Flat Stanley helped us strip the flax and weave the stars.

The photos below show us with Flat Stanley weaving our stars.

Giving Instructions

We have been learning how to write and give instructions.  Firstly we watched a you tube clip on how to make a paper helicopter.  We then wrote instructions on how to make the helicopter for a year 4 student to follow.  From this exercise we discovered written instructions alone were not adequate.  Therefore we discussed how we could improve by drawing diagrams along with the instructions, draw pictures/diagrams only and making a movie with oral instructions.  We have broken up into teams and trying out which set of instructions are most successful  You will have to wait for the outcome but this is how our written instructions worked out or not!!

This is us giving instructions and the outcome.

This is what the helicopter should have looked like.