Time Zone Research

In Mathswe are looking at Time. One of the things we needed to inquire into was Time Zones. Sometimes in Australia we have five time zones and at other times we have three. This was something we wanted to find out more about!

Students were given some suggested lines of inquiry but also encouraged to come up with their own. We needed to acknowledge our sources of information as well as show the answers to the specific lines of inquiry we chose.

Some suggestions were

  • What purpose to time zones serve?
  • How are the boundaries of time zones determined?
  • What is daylight saving for?
  • Who decides how long a second is?

Look at the student blogs to see what everyone came up with!

Show Me Your Fractions

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In Mathematics we are looking at Fractions. As part of our Tuning In, Mr Huebl asked us to demonstrate our prior knowledge on working with fractions by creating an instructional video.

As well as being part of our Mathematics Inquiry, they will also serve as resources for students both in Year 6 and lower years that require a bit of extra assistance with different operations with fractions.

Please have a look, refresh your knowledge and leave us a comment!

David, Le-Anne, Milly, DiHan, Alyshia, TK, TP, Scott, Billy, Gillian (featuring the encouragement of Mr Steel),  Jack, Jason, Chris, Marlon, Henry, Josie and Ellaina.

Watching the fraction videos

Henny’s Math Lesson

Today, Mr Huebl asked all the people who had finished their enlargement, to find something productive to do. Somebody piped up with the bright idea to give everyone a cartoon to draw, so we could do a 6HU Mash Up, of lots of different characters.

I explained to the class what we would be doing this Math lesson, and we made a list of the characters everyone wanted to do. Instead of enlarging, we were going to be reducing our characters. Mr Huebl even joined in himself, because he decided not to interfere with my teaching. Over all, my lesson went well, Mr Huebl finished first, and everyone enjoyed themselves.

We will update with the finish product when it’s done!

“I think this Math lesson was very interesting, because to choose our own characters to draw, and it was a change from enlargement to reduction.” – Henry

 

Laura and Maggie
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Emily and Eva
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Mr Huebl & Laura working on their reductions
laurasas.edublogs.org

BattleShip Maths Part 2

We evolved our previous game of battleships, trying to create a ‘perfect game’. We thought that there needed to be more player involvement in the game and that it should be designed so that there was always one winner. These are the variations that we came up with

  • all players start on a square.
  • after every five squares are called out, the players who are hit leave the board, and the remaining players can move to any other square on the board that does not have another player in it.
  • this continues until there is a set of five squares called and no players get hit.
  • at this point, remaining players occupy two squares with their legs straddling a divide.
  • squares are now called one at a time until there are two players only remaining.
  • The last two players occupy four squares each and squares are called until both players have all four of their squares hit.

We played this several times and we are confident it is the best variation that we could hink of.

By Chris, 6HU

 

Battleship Maths

As a follow on from our Zombie Maths activity yesterday, we played class Battleship in Maths today. We got the idea from William Chamberlain who commented on our post and shared his class blog post about his class learning the same type of Maths. As a nod to this international sharing, we decided to give his lesson a go – with a few changes.

Our Battlefield

First, we marked out a 5×5 grid on the carpet and labelled the axis.

 

We started the activity with the students laying out their ‘ships’ on their own 5×5 grids. We had a 4, 3 and a 2 square ship to lay out on the grid anyway we liked. Then we placed our ‘soldiers’ on the grid squares one by one and the students marked them off, much like a game of Bingo. We decided to award both the first and the last place getters, as the ‘winners’ would be the first to have their ships sink, and the ‘losers’ would be the survivors!

After this first game, we found that most of the class were finishing at the same time. Putting a gamification hat on, I asked the students, how we could change the game to alter the way the results played out. Ideas included fewer players, more squares and a different number of ships.

It’s a hit!

What impressed me the most was an idea that suggested the outcome be altered. There were 25 squares, corresponding with 25 students in the class. The suggestion was to give everybody a square, then there would be only one winner. It was proposed if the fairness of the game could be altered by

Placing the soldiers on the grid

letting players choose their own square or whether the players should announce their square to other players. I was noticing that the game of Battleship had evolved into the design of a fair chance game. This impressed me because it showed the kind nature of my students in wanting the game to give equality to all participants.

The irony of this in a competitive context was not lost on some of my more ‘enthusiastic’ students who

‘complained’ that this wasn’t really a game anymore, as there was no strategy, only pure luck. I pounced on this as an opportunity to have the class define in their own way ‘what is it that makes a game?’ and how we could change the rules and parameters of our ‘Battleship Activity’ to create the best game we could.

I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with!

One of our brave soldiers

 

Note: We have updated the rules here.

Zombie Maths

In Maths we have started looking at Location. Our task today was to draw a map on some graph paper, and using grid coordinates, come up with some questions that would test our classmates’ knowledge of plotting a map. We were also told to include a scale on our map so that we could have measurement and converstion questions.

We decided to create a map of a town, including shops, houses and a graveyard. Then we thought that it would be fun to have zombie based questions! Our first idea was ‘How long would it take for a zombie to get to the school if it walks at 5km/h?’ Then we thought about practical zombie considerations such as fences, roads, parks etc that would affect its movement.

 

 

 

These are the questions we have come up with so far…

  • “If the number of the sectors in the cemetery represent the speed in km/h that zombies from that sector can walk, how long would it take for the hospital to be completely overrun?”
  • “If a family member wanted to get a shotgun from the store to kill a zombie, how far would it be from the mansion to the school?”
By Alyshia and Leanne

 

Maths Continuous Learning Week 3

Your investigation this week is onto the commection between millilitres and cubic centimetres.

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You may present your findings anyway you wish, but it must be recorded in a blog post. For example, if you do an experiment, record (video) the process and post that, along with a description on your blog. Alternatively, you may construct a model and take a photo of it.

Whatever you choose to do, please comment on this post with a URL to your blog post (not your blog URL, but the URL of the post.)

Good Luck

 

Mr H

Continuous Learning – Maths Week 2

So, the task is to creatively show the features of a 3D shape of your choice. You can do this however you like, and choose whichever shape you like. The only stipulation is that you need to present it as a post on your blog. Remember to categorise and tag it appropriately, and use the link to the post as a ‘comment’ below.

Any questions, see one of the Year 6 teachers!

 

Whaaaaat?

Calendar Investigations

The results we found

We have been investigating number patterns, and the phenomena that we observe. Our task was to look at a ‘square’ of dates from a calendar and investigate the sums of the dates as we added horizontally, vertically and diagonally. We found that the total sum we found was the same every time, because it was the same four numbers that we were adding together. It fooled a few of us, though!

Please look at our individual student blogs to see our own write ups.

 

Thank You for reading.