Maths Problem Solving

We have been completing various maths problems and investigations.
 Using six art straws each the same length,cut two of them in half.You now have eight straws, four long and four short.You can make 2 squares from the eight straws.
Arrange your eight straws to make 3 squares, all the same size.Not as easy as it sounds.Look at our attempts to solve this problem.

Does it count with  3 equal squares plus a triangle?

almost there

can we bend the straws?

3 equal and some left over

 looks right -but some overlapping straws

we can make 4 equal squares

3 equal plus 2 bits sticking out ( but the 'diagonal'  is the way forward)

3 squares and 1 triangle

3 squares and a cross

3 squares but not equal

 3 squares and a diagonal

sharing ideas

discussing solutions

almost there

That's how to do it!( after a tip from Mrs Chadwick-Georgie actually had it sketched in her maths tool kit!)

Easy once you know how!

Using our Sports Day Data.

Once sports day was finished we used the data for our maths lessons. Our first job was to complete the chart on the board showing all 8 events and all houses totals.Once this was done and verified by the class we could start to handle and interpret it. Some of the class calculated the mean for events or houses, others calculated the mode, range and median.day 2 was presenting data in a graph -some produced bar line graphs, other bar charts and even a pie chart.Good maths using real data.Our interpreting showed where trophies were both won and lost!

collecting the sheets for different events

filling in the data 

checking totals

almost there

analysing results