Yearly Archives: 2013

Battleship Maths

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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

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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

 

Experimenting with Electrical Circuits (Science)

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In today’s science lesson, we were given the task of experimenting with batteries, lightbulbs, wires, pins, motors, rubbers, digital multimeter and a variety of other things.Some children decided to experiment with resources they had never seen or heard of before. We were told to experiment with any metal objects we could find. A small group of girls specialised in making long circuits, including more than three main objects. Two boys decided they would go with short circuits, but using different resources, such as scissors, paperclips and wood. Everyone managed to make a completed circuit work. Here are some photos of our science lesson.

By Henna Penna

 

 

 

 

 

2013

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6HU are back with a new line up in 2013. We have our individual student blogs still listed on our class home page, and we are looking forward to sharing our learning with the world.

Our first Unit of Inquiry this year is into Digital Citizenship. We have begun by examining the importance of being secure when we are online. Our student blogs have ‘Password Security Checklists’ that we have designed for our Year 1 Buddies.

We are reading the novel “I left my Mobile at the Mall” by Wendy Harmer. It tells the story of a teenage girl, whose life is turned upside down when she… well, you can guess.

We will be regularly posting entries in the 100 Word Challenge and posting our inquiry reflections on our student blogs. Highlights of class activities will feature on this class blog.

We are all looking forward to a fantastic year in 2013!

Mr Huebl & 6HU