More Maths in Graphics

A while ago all the CoL teachers were asked to reflect on where Maths happened in their classrooms.
My blog post on this is here.
Over the last week, my intermediate classes have been looking at networks. Making 3D shapes out of flat sheets. Link to information on my new class site.
They were given some nice easy grid paper and we made a start making cubes, cuboids and pyramids.

We used grid paper so they could concentrate on the shape and form we were making rather than doing too many skills at once. I have tried doing this activity with plain paper, rulers and pencil before and it was a total disaster as the measuring and drawing of the squares was too hard. With a grid paper, they can count the squares on the grid and use the lines there.

We had a conversation about where the spots on a dice are placed and they found out that the opposite sides of a dice add up to 7.

As they were doing this on Wednesday, their class teacher happened to be in the room and mentioned that they were doing probability in maths in class. PERFECT!

When they completed their dice we had a quick session throwing them and making a note of what number we got.

We then talked about why their results were not an equal 1 in 6 for each of the numbers. They came up with - 30 throws was not enough. The dice is not very heavy or accurate so it wasn't throwing or rolling like a dice normally does.

Not too bad for a graphics lesson! Maths in action!