P5/6 have had a very busy week full of maths-themed activities for Maths Week Scotland!

STEM Space Maths 

This term we have been doing our STEM Space Maths topic, which focuses on spatial reasoning skills and includes topics like pattern, symmetry, shape and links to multiplication, division and fractions.

This week we looked at Arrays. Arrays can be objects, shapes, or numbers that are arranged in horizontal rows and vertical columns. Arrays can help with learning times table facts for multiplication and division. 

On Monday we learned about arrays and made posters to show various examples of how arrays can help us with our times table facts.

On Tuesday we built block arrays using Lego, which helped demonstrate how fraction work in a visual and practical way.

On Wednesday we made learned how we can find out the number of arrays by multiplying the number of rows by the number of columns, even if some of the arrays are covered!

Maths Tales

For our writing this week, P5/6 have all created a story to enter in the Maths Week Scotland Maths Tales contest! The theme this year is “Travel Tales”, so pupils must write a story that includes numbers, shapes, something to do with travel, and includes the Maths Scotland mascot, Finn Finity! The pupils have all made an excellent effort on their stories and comics this week. Well done P5/6!

Maths Artwork 

P5/6 have also discovered some examples of how maths can be used in artwork and have given it a try themselves! First we made Japanese Notan artwork, which required the class to think carefully about reflective symmetry when creating their pictures!

We also looked at the work of some famous Scottish artists’ who use maths in their pieces, including tessellation and scale, then we made our own pictures!

Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics 

We also investigated how the Ancient Egyptians used Hieroglyphs for 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000 and 1000000 to represent numbers. We then solved word problems as a class using the Egyptian Hieroglyphs, then made our own problems to challenge each other! This prompted a lot of interesting discussions around place value and bigger numbers.

What a busy week! Well done P5/6!