Recently a group of Stage 3 teachers from our iLearn schools spent a day exploring how to develop rich mathematical tasks using problem based photographs for their students.
In preparing for the day I was inspired by a trip to a Lego exhibition of Skyscrapers in Sydney with my son for his birthday ;) It was obvious from the moment we spied the splendid models that there was so much mathematics underpinning their creation. I took lots of photos and gathered some fascinating statistics about the skyscrapers and their scale Lego models I then sourced another intriguing Creative Commons image of Ryan McNaughton the Brickman who had been the designer and lead builder of the model towers.
To get us started we engaged the teachers in a collaborative brainstorm using Google Slides on the iPad to identify interesting maths questions which would lead to opportunities for maths investigations.
Some of the tasks we explored can be accessed via the Lego Towers Look Skywards padlet.
As they worked the teachers also learnt how to create Maths Journals in Book Creator App. We also uploaded their Maths Journals to Google Drive so that they could give and receive feedback to one another using the audio feature in Book Creator.
We look forward to seeing some of the other rich maths tasks which teachers will develop and use on their return to school.
