HNHS Band Performance and Math

Singing Performers

Concert Band

Piano/Guitar Performers

We were fortunate enough to get to enjoy performances by many talented students from Holy Names High School on Friday afternoon, in our gym.  There were quite a few alumni of St. Gabriel School as well!

As our warm-up activity in math yesterday,  I posed the question that you see here.  The students were told that they could work alone, with a partner, or in a group.  We brainstormed the tools that they could use to reasonably and accurately display this before they came up with math calculations that would describe this.  They worked for almost 45 minutes and it was interesting to see the transition in thinking.  Since many students had no idea of the correct answer, they thought that they needed a lot less tools than they did.  Once they realized this, I watched groups pool their resources to complete the task.  In the end two models were successfully made:  one of paper and one of a combination of base 10 blocks and centicubes.  Check out the photo gallery.

Initial small groups:

 

After realizing how many tools were needed and the amount of time and space required to complete the task, Check out how some students migrated to other groups and pooled their supplies.  Some students were stubborn about this and required much coaxing.
New groupings:

...and the final products!  Be sure to check out the anchor chart and reinforce with your child that converting between linear units is not even close to the same as converting between square units!

One square metre using Base 10 and centicubes.

One square metre using centimetre grid paper.