This term we’ve been continuing our focus on concrete representations of mathematical situations, to engage students and guide them to self-discovery of mathematical relationships that stick.

Year 7 have been repeating the work of Archimedes discovering Pi. 

They investigated the relationship between a circle’s diameter and its circumference, using dinner plates, cups, pringles tubes and anything else they can lay their hands on that’s circular. 

Students appreciated the need for accurate measurement and realised that this ratio is the same for any circle size and that it’s a very interesting and useful number.

Those satisfied faces are Year 8’s who have been going one step further, getting hands on with paper shapes, a pair of scissors and a little creativity, discovering that there are novel ways of rearranging triangles, parallelograms, trapezia and circles to make calculating their areas easy.

The students have had a lot of fun and made some great insights from their own work that will stay with them and spark more self-discovery and enjoyment in mathematical thinking to come.