Cube Tube

Video and documentation to help you catch the vision of learning to work like a mathematician. A mathematician's work begins with an interesting problem. Explore:

• Principles
• Problems
• Teaching Craft

View on screen, or download if you wish, but please acknowledge the source.

First presented through the web site of the Association of Teachers of Mathematics (ATM), UK, this video introduces an alternative vision of mathematics education that is driven by the Working Mathematically Process identified by mathematicians. The video was produced in conjunction with the article An Ocean of Possibilities, published in Mathematics Teaching 217, March 2010, by ATM.

Click the photo to begin the video. (Time ... 2:15)

A child in Year 5/6 at Rangebank Primary School, Victoria, explains how to change a triangle into a rectangle.

• Can your students reconstruct the vital unspoken elements of the demonstration?
• Can your students extend the 'aha' moment implied by the video to discover how to calculate the area of triangle?

This Investigation Guide might help. The mathematical content in the investigation is embodied in Task 187, Triangle Area, from the Mathematics Task Centre and Lesson 44, Area of a Triangle, from Maths300. The Maths300 lesson also supplies software.

Click the photo to begin the video. (Time ... 0:11)

Anne Mullans, St. Patrick's Primary School, Murrumbeena, produced this inspirational video to stimulate their Potato Olympics adventure in 2008. That year also happened to be the official human year of the potato, but to potatoes every year is the year of the potato, so the video remains very relevant to any Olympic year. Use it as is, or get inspired and create your own 'video-duction' to this event.

Potato Olympics derives from the work of one Swedish teacher recorded in this article, Potatis Matematik, published in The Classroom Connection, Vol.4 No.2, April - June 1996. From there, various teachers from many places have played with the idea of using potatoes as a concrete teaching aid and, somewhere, the idea of Potato Olympics, as described in Anne's video was born. Maths300 Lesson 67, has collected many of these ideas and includes fabulous Classroom Contributions from Year 7, Luther College, Victoria ... Year 5/6 Kingston, Tasmania ... and Fregon School in very far outback South Australia.

Click the photo to begin the video. (Time ... 1:14)

Two colleagues explore a little teaching craft using Task 154,
4 Arm Shapes. The video was made by the Association of Teachers of Mathematics, UK, and was first published in Mathematics Teaching 223, July 2011.

• Visit the journal page of the ATM web site for the latest edition of Mathematics Teaching.
• Visit the 4 Arm Shapes cameo for more information about this task.

Click the photo to begin the video. (Time ... 09:59)

Bella, Emma, Amy & Beatrice, Year 6, Camberwell Primary School, describe their insightful algorithm for changing yellow to blue. The problem uses plugs with a different colour on each side. The challenge is to begin with four yellow plugs and by turning over all except one on any turn, to change them all to blue. You might like to try it yourself first because it isn't as easy as the girls make it look. Instead of plugs use four scrap of paper with a cross on one side of each.

• Yellow to Blue derives from Task 132, Red To Blue. This link is to its Task Cameo, which provides more information about the task.

Click the photo to begin the video. (Time ... 0:54)

Eric The Sheep is used as a an example of what it means to work like a mathematician. The video, produced for the ATM YouTube channel in May 2012, emphasises becoming interested in a problem, collecting and organising data and making and testing hypotheses. Follow up the video by exploring the Task Cameo of:

• Task 45, Eric The Sheep.

Click the photo to begin the video. (Time ... 6:23)