Time reflections

New learning

Maths lessons are busy and varied with all kinds of maths to work on so it is good to stop, think and reflect on our learning. After our work on time we have all taken a few moments to think about what new learning we have developed during our time with time. Here are a selection of our thoughts.

Hickory Dickory Dock, The mouse ran up the clock ...

If the red hand is on the ten and ...

A very useful life skill is being able to tell the time. This last week in class we have been working on a wide range of activities to help us understand time. We thought of all sorts of examples of when we need to tell the time in everyday life such as being at school on time, having lunch, getting the bus and going to the cinema. All of these events rely on good time keeping. Estimating the passage of time is really quite tricky but some of us were brilliant at estimating the passage of one minute.

Estimating one minute - Brilliant!

If there are 60 seconds in one minute then ...

As we have developed our understanding we have been working out time durations between two different times. Later in the week we used our knowledge to convert seconds, minutes, hours and days. Did you know that there are 3,600 seconds in one hour? You work that out by doing 60 x 60. We don't do our 60 times table in class but we do know that 6 x 6 = 36 so 60 x 60 = 3,600 seconds. That's why we keep practising our key times table knowledge as it helps us in so many areas of maths. Well, time is getting on ...

Rounding with Tarsia

Off we go

Continuing with our work on rounding we have been doing a variety of different things to check our learning this week. Some of us were working on Mathletics rounding activities on the computers, others were generating their own numbers to put in an everyday context and then present them in a variety of ways. A couple of groups used sets of Tarsia cards to round two, three and four digit numbers. Once again, working together has helped us check our understanding of how to round up or down for tens, hundreds and thousands.

Almost there

Success!

Round, round and round we go.

Coming up with estimates in maths is often a good idea and this week we have been working on rounding a variety of different numbers. We know that for 1,2,3 and 4, you round down and for 5,6,7,8 and 9, you round up. Some of us have been finding numbers used in the children's newspaper First News. We then rounded them to the nearest ten, hundred or thousand. We have been thinking of the different situations in everyday life when being able to round numbers would be useful. Pocket money time could be the perfect time to demonstrate our knowledge!

Rounding up and rounding down

Numbers are everywhere in newspapers

Investigating symmetry in triangles

Lines of symmetry in an equilateral triangle

Continuing our thinking on symmetry we have been investigating the lines of symmetry in triangles. Using georods to make different triangles we discovered that an equilateral triangle has three lines of symmetry. We then moved on to examine isosceles, right angled triangles and scalene triangles. We found out that the scalene triangle does not have any lines of symmetry, poor thing!

Checking our thinking

Isosceles symmetry

We know the name of these triangles. Do you?

Designing symmetrical patterns

Team work

The second part of the autumn term sees us working on another area of geometry in maths. We began the week by investigating how to make symmetrical patterns. Using our numicon resources some of us designed patterns with horizontal symmetry, some with vertical symmetry and some even had diagonal symmetry. Working with partners helped us to understand that, 'an object is symmetrical when one half is a mirror image of the other half'.

Vertical symmetry with the full board covered

Looking pleased with our symmetrical pattern