Pi Investigation

We've been thinking about Pi. No, not pie. Not pai either! The mahi was tino pai though, and it did get us thinking about the size of certain pastries. 

We started off by thinking about how to visually calculate, or estimate, the area of a circle. Some great strategies were shared, for example finding the number of full squares then estimating the total area of part squares. This got us thinking... there must be a more accurate way!

   

So we followed our instructions, measuring and recording diameter and circumference (and learning what these are!). 

Then we were asked to divide our circumference by the diameter. This hovered around 3 point something no matter the size of the circle we had measured. Hmm..

We figured out that we could reverse the equation and multiply either the circumference or diameter by Pi to find the true measurement. We think our circumference measurement was probably a bit off because of the string. 

He tino PAI tō mahi pāngarau, koutou!

Tessellation Art

This week we have enjoyed exploring concepts of geometry and measurement through meaningful and authentic tasks. We made tessellation art this week. We were inspired by the work of Escher. 

Tessellation is a pattern or shape that fits together perfectly with no overlaps or gaps. 

By Joni

By Octavia 

This artwork was very challenging and we had to use Growth Mindset to persevere. We also had to remain positive.

Pīwakawaka Enlargement

This week we have enjoyed exploring concepts of geometry and measurement through meaningful and authentic tasks.

Enlargement is one of those concepts that seems on its surface to be straightforward. That is, until you actually attempt to enlarge something!

We thought about some real-world examples of enlargement such as growing, baking and manipulating pictures on a computer. We understand that you need to drag the corners on a picture to enlarge it, otherwise you are only changing the width or height. We also noticed that the opposite of enlarging is shrinking, as is the case with a globe!

We were given a small piece of a picture, and the instruction to enlarge it by a factor of 3. The original piece had a grid of 4cmx4cm and the enlarged one, 12cmx12cm.

We had no idea what the complete picture would be and we were encouraged to use a full rainbow of colour.

We worked in pairs to help each other. It was really tricky to get it right, but we used our Growth Mindsets and supported each other to get it done.

It turned out the picture was one of our favourite manu māori (native birds), the pīwakawaka:

Tihei mauri ora!

Preparation for our trip towards Breaker Bay

We have been working on measuring things in maths. Tomorrow we hope to get down towards Breaker Bay and be part of the Marine Metre Squared project as part of which we will examine carefully what is living in a square metre of our coastline.

This week we have been learning about identifying and classifying the types of flora and fauna we found on our trip to Worser Bay rock pools last week. Today we problem solved in groups how we could use string and rulers to work out how big a metre squared really is and come up with some ways of helping us recreate it on the beach tomorrow.

We had to measure four lots of one metre accurately with a ruler then identify each metre on our piece of string. We hope the weather will hold up and we'll be able to explore our coastline tomorrow!

We have been learning about length, width and height

"Our building is 30cm high, 20cm long and 40 cm wide"

How Tall? Problem Solving as part of our Inquiry

How Tall from Nic on Vimeo.