Y6JP investigate straight lines

This week, we have been looking at straight lines. First of all we made some patterns using straight lines and then we looked for patterns using mathematical diagonals in polygons.

Curves of Pursuit

We used straight lines and our accurate measuring skills to make straight lines look like curves. We had to measure a cm in from each edge and use our ruler to join the points. Then we carried on inside the shape until there was no space left. We all started using a simple quadrilateral.

When we were confident, we tried other polygons. Here is a hexagon.

And Louis was really patient drawing his lines inside this decagon. Isn't it beautiful?

Take a look in our classroom for more curves of pursuit examples. We think they are really clever!

Polygon Diagonals

We did a maths investigation looking at the number of diagonal lines within different polygons. We learnt that mathematical diagonals aren't just lines in quadrilaterals. Any line joining two corners is a diagonal. Again, we started really simply by doing a square, then we moved onto pentagon, hexagon, heptagon, octagon and so on. Once we had done this we looked at the results. We spotted patterns in the two columns but that was easy! Mrs Purdom asked us to look at the relationship between the two columns and try and work out a formula. It was a bit tricky but some of us actually got there by the end of the lesson.

Lyla was the quickest to work out that the number of diagonals was n x n-3 and then divide by 2. We puzzled over the best way to write this and came up with n (n-3) / 2.

This formula helped us to work out how many diagonals a 25-sided shape would have. Some of us went onto even bigger numbers - we were allowed to use a calculator!

In 6CW today (Friday) we just managed to avoid the rain and had the second part of the morning in the woods. We noticed on our way through to the meeting area just how much litter there seemed to be on the ground. A few of us decided that we couldn't leave it so went back up to school to collect litter pickers sticks and a bin liner to clean it up. This is us at work.

Our other job was to create pictures on the forest floor just using the natural materials we could find. We could use leaves, seed pods, twigs, sticks, stones etc but nothing that was man-made. We then went round to look at each other's pictures to see if we could guess what they had made. You can see some of us at work below and also some close up of some of our creations.