Sequence Zoo

In preparing for a Year 8 revision lesson for a SATS paper, I came across the following questions:

This is a great example of the requirement for proof and reasoning: any of the nth term expressions would fit the first three terms of 1, 2 and 4, yet depending on the situation it is likely that some of the expressions would be inappropriate.

It is also reminded me of an idea of Lucia Handley, using cubes to investigate sequences.

The Sequence Zoo

The lesson began with an arrangement of animals: giraffes, pigs and cows/zebras. Pupils could then be challenged to work out what the baby of each animal looked like, or to work out whether they could give the number of bricks required to make a species, given its height.

Alternatively, the animals in the image above could be used and pupils had to find out which animal had grown out of sequence.

The cow/zebra is particularly interesting, as you could look either at total number of blocks, or the white / black components.

Thanks Lucia!

Maths is Just Another Language

Inspired by the video of the 10 year old maths teacher, I want to increase my focus on maths as a language.

For example,

Translate these sentences into mathematish

These could be adapted to suit each topic but overall should help students to understand how expressions are formed and therefore also to interpret them. This falls in line with Anne Watson's thinking that students should be taught to read algebraic sentences out loud to give them meaning.

UPDATE: 28/05/2013

For algebra specific translations, translating english to algebrese

http://www.algebra.com/algebra/homework/Human-and-algebraic-language/english-to-algebreze-in-word-problems.lesson

When you take a real-world situation and translate it into math, you are actually 'expressing' it; hence the mathematical term 'expression'.