Making Connections to Problem Solving with Tangrams...

A small glitch with our internet connection this morning opened up a great opportunity to make the most of a teachable moment. Having been taken through the process of making my own tangram puzzle in a recent staff meeting I decided this was the perfect time to introduce this puzzle to LS1 and LS2. We had already come together as a block this morning for singing practise so decided to stay together for the learning experience, which meant we had a huge range of abilities as the students ranged from Y5 to Y8. There were no templates, no rulers, no pencils... just lots of smiling faces, blank pieces of A4 paper and lots of pairs of scissors. 

The instructions I gave were not written anywhere which gave me a great opportunity to remind everyone about the importance of listening carefully and asking questions. I made sure my instructions were explicit and found myself making folds and cutting along folded lines with my back to the class and my exemplar in the air, something far easier said than done! Along the way as each piece of the puzzle appeared I introduced the content language of 2d shapes so that each piece was referred to by the correct name and not 'this one' or 'that one'. 

Our students are really good at collaborating so without being asked I noticed my class immediately stepped up to support the younger ones. This learning experience was a very loud one as I encouraged everyone to talk to each other about what they needed to do at each step. Interestingly we only had two puzzles that needed to be remade. 

                                       

Organisation was one of the keys behind the success of the 'making' task and as we were using the content vocabulary collecting the offcuts was a breeze. Once all the pieces had been cut I asked everyone to mix up their puzzle (something quite hard to model in the air!) and put the pieces back together to make the original square. This is when the real conversation happened. There was a wealth of problem solving strategies being used so I took advantage of this and unpacked it further. 

After morning tea we all came back to take part in the 'fun' challenge component. Greg Wong took the students who had made their tangrams through the challenges of creating animals from the shapes while I helped the group who had been at puberty talks to make their tangram. Team teaching was then the order of the day with Greg explaining the history behind the puzzle and me process of problem solving. As a result we were all able to make connections not only to the content but also to the origin of the puzzle and the process of problem solving. The blog posts from both classes reflect the learning, the fun and the content language that was revisited today.