Patterns of dots

Click on this animation

We all to this image home last week:

The task was to see what we noticed about the pattern.
At the end of the week, we discussed in pairs what we had noticed. Then we shared some of these things with the classes. Here's what some children in 4G noticed:

The prime numbers are in circles.

There's a pattern for 6 that keeps coming up.

Numbers in the 3 times table are in triangles.

There's a square of dots pattern for the multiples of 4.

Patterns combine. For instance has a pattern of 4 in a 3 pattern.

The 9 times table is a pattern of triangles.

Prime numbers line up diagonally. Or is it a lightning flash?

Triangles sometimes have triangle-shaped holes inside.

The non-primes show how many are in a group and then how many groups there are.

Notice Tibo's claim: "All the times tables are in diagonal lines." Do you agree? Can you prove or disprove his claim?
Did you notice anything different?

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Thanks to youcubed.org for the nudge to use this great representation!

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Friction - settling a question

Talking about friction, we rubbed our hands across the desk and the carpet. "Which is easier?" asked Mr Gregg. We couldn't agree: some thought the desk, some thought the carpet.

So... a scientific experiment. Measure the force it takes to move a stone in a bag on the two surfaces. Which would take more force?

The carpet took more force: 10 Newtons, compared to just 5 on the desk. There must be more friction on the carpet.

But Tibo said, "It's not fair. The bag makes it easier on the desk."

Half the class agreed. So we untied the bag, and tried the stone directly on the two surfaces:

This time it took 10 Newtons on the carpet, and only 2 Newtons on the desk. There's definitely more friction on the carpet!

Now the only question is, why didn't we agree that in the beginning?

Factors with Cuisenaire rods

We've been looking at the factors of numbers using Cuisenaire rods.  Here are some of our numbers:

Some numbers have lots of factors.
Some have only two - themselves and one - these ones we call prime numbers.



We've followed this up by looking at different ways of covering a chosen area with just one colour of rod.

See a gallery here:

pebble poem

smooth
hard
like granite
volcanic
dirty
uneven
like it's bitten
small
has a lot of cracks
stripy
has a lot of dots
like a flat planet
dark coloured
and that is my pebble

Lava Art

Continuing our volcano art we have been looking closely at lava and the rippled patterns that are formed, particularly when set. We have also looked at bubbling hot volcanic mud pools for inspiration.

Here is a slide show of the first stage of our pictures, we have painted a background of molten lava effects on black paper which when dry will be ready for the second layer of textured ripples.

Volcano Art

We have been learning about volcanos as part of our Active Planet topic. It has been fascinating watching short videos of active volcanoes and the different effects and movement of lava. Inspired by this we have created our own volcano paintings exploring lots of different techniques to recreate the effects of an erupting volcano.

Some of the techniques we used were very messy! We dripped, poured, dribbled, blew, flicked and splashed paint onto the paper.

Here are the results:   

Weighing Pebbles

Year 4 have been using forcemeters to measure the weight of pebbles and rocks. 

First we looked closely at the forcemeters.  We noticed some forcemeters had different scales:













We then worked cooperatively in small groups interpreting the scale and helping each other check the results.

After we had finished recording our measurements, we compared  our results with the rest of the class to see how accurate we were.  We were in fact very pleased, as we had lots of answers the same!

Pebble Poem

Grey                                                                                                                                                            line                                                                                                                                                               a big hole                                                                                                                                                     curved                                                                                                                                                          a little crack                                                                                                                                                 lots of littie white holes

Pebble poem

Heavy

Cold

Smooth

Hard

Greyish

dirty

Lots of holes

Golden dots

Arrowish

Pebble Poem

cool.
exciting.
it's kind of mixed with onother rock.
smooth.
it has a little hole.
it is brown.
it has a line.
it's a little heavy.
it has bits of white.
it is tough.

Pebble poem

Rough,
Volcanic rock,
Dark to light,
Tiny bits of white,
Pach of red,
Covered with holes

Pebble Poem

Old

Born

Animals

Past

Through

You

Smooth

Hard

Inside

Dark

White

Browny

Shiny

Holes

Iron

Big

Grass

Volcano

Pebble Poem

Smooth

Holes on you

Solid

Coconate shape

Small

Colour blackish bronish

Smell

White fossil

Pebble Poem

Smooth,
It has holes,
I put a compass on it
To pretend it was a real one,
Small,
It has a white line.

What I did

Here's how I thought about my estimation challenge.

What I do to estimate it and to have the exact number:

- first, I tried to count them but it was impossible as I counted many time the same log

- so I decided to split the picture into 8 parts of the same size:

It was better but sometimes I counted the same log

-To help me, I drew a dot at the middle of each log. And I counted how many logs in each part:

Result:

estimation: 8 groups with 18 dots approximately in each group so  8*18= 144

exact number: 17+14+17+17+18+20+21+19= 143

Click here to go back to the challenge.

My estimate for my estimation challenge

Imagine a circle on just a quarter of the flowers
Count the flowers in the circle... there are about fourteen

Times by four for the whole picture
DON'T forget to double it for the other side of the plant!
Answer... about 112 flowers!

Back to the question

Take a line for a walk

We have had a great time exploring taking a line for a walk.......making curls and zig-zags, not just a straight line!
Using the Primary Colour Wheel as a guide we then filled in the space between the lines with oil pastels.We had to make sure we filled the "inside" and not the "outside".

Beginning our Maths Journals





Our first day. In our maths lesson we stuck this into our new Maths Journals:

We thought that was a funny thing, "It's OK to make mistakes". We talked about it, and had some great ideas:

Beatriz: When you make mistakes you learn more.

Jinmin: You learn by mistakes.

Hannah: The teachers don’t expect you to know everything.

Orla: You only make mistakes sometimes.

Rhea: We don’t want to make the same mistake again and again.

Keech: It’s OK to make mistakes because you can just cross it out.

Here's Miss Whittaker making a mistake with our number line when she put it up last year:

It was OK. She fixed it.

 We looked carefully at our number line, and the way the numbers in it are shown:

What patterns can you see? We spotted plenty, which we wrote down in our Maths Journals:

Rhea: All of the numbers on the 2nd line always have orange.

Lucia: All the five times table are blue.

Felix: Numbers like 22 have 11 under them.

Nicola: There are a lot of reds.

Evangelos: The ones that have 11 always have red in the ring.

Noa: The two is always orange.

Hannah: On the line 82 there is a pattern orange then a different colour and it repeats.

Orla: Most numbers are in a full red circle.

Maryam: All the even numbers rings have orange on them.

Maryam: All the odd numbers on the top line except from nine are full circles and none of them are
the same colour.

Maryam: There is a repeating pattern of orange and then no orange.

Jinmin: All the nine times table is green.

Beatriz: In the first column in goes whole whole half.

Armand: I notice that each colour means a times table. The ones that have 11 always have a red ring. If it’s orange it’s in the 2 times table. All the greens are in the 3 times table.

Ines: Every two times table is orange.

Tibo: Every tens have blue and orange.

Miguel: Every 5 times table is blue.

Have a look at this place.
What do you notice?
What do you wonder?

The ocean floor

This is a map of the ocean floor. Click on it.