MathsLinks

Belinda Keir on  23 November 14  at  10:27 AM #

I did it this morning as ‘problem of the week’ with all of our stage two students (Friday maths rotations) and it was a real winner.

To start with, I showed them the first 20 seconds of the video and we wrote down answers to the first 3 questions (i.e. Polya’s phase one: understand the problem).

We then watched the clip to the end and identified what problem solving strategies could be observed (phases 2 and 3). We identified ‘guess check and refine’ and ‘act it out’.

Finally everyone had to write an ‘I wonder…’ question into the last box and share it with the class (phase 4). They came up with:
What would happen if the spider and fly were in different places?
Are there any other 13cm paths?
What would the longest path be?
Why is the spiral path the shortest?
I wonder why moving the walls made the distance shorter?
Can I keep trying other ways?

After all this talking and writing they got to measure distances for themselves and cut out the three templates at the end of the worksheet.

I think what I really liked about this activity was that instead of solving a problem themselves, the students got to see someone else do it and what Polya’s phases can look like in practice.