Year 6 Had A Fun Filled Maths Week

During our Maths week at Normanhurst, Year 6 looked at Ciphers. First of all, we briefly discussed how the Enigma Machine was used during WWII and how Alan Turing played a vital role in cracking the code with his efforts. We, then, moved onto looking at how a cipher could be used (even in the Roman era) for secret communication.

Children cut out their cipher templates and prepared their cipher wheels. Some had the option to use numbers to encrypt their messages, too. Children decided on some messages to encrypt. Some chose to encrypt word problems; some chose number equations or riddles. Then, they passed their messages to their peers to be decrypted.

During the process, the children also learnt the importance of using an index and how the index can further complicate their encryptions if needed.

There were a lot of code breaking and laughter during our session!

 

To celebrate 100th day in school, Normanhurst Year 6 pupils participated in an Escape Room activity where they had to solve various maths puzzles under 100 minutes to break free and receive a key (to exchange for a prize).

The Year 6 classroom were divided into three different zones for three groups. Children were not allowed out of their allocated spaces and could only break free once they completed all the maths challenges.

Everyone started with Question 1 and worked their way through 10 different questions. Each group were given some assistance options to call upon during the challenge. The three options available were ‘help from an adult’, ‘pass a question and come back to it’ and ‘exchange a question’. As a result, a lot of strategic thinking was necessary in order to be the most time-efficient group.

Our winning group (Team 1) completed the challenge in 75 minutes with no assistance at all. After that, there was a race against time for the second place. Team 2 was overtaken by Team 3, who completed their challenges in 85 minutes. Team 2 completed their challenges in 90 minutes. All three teams successfully achieved their goals and answered all the Maths questions under 100 minutes.

At the end, each pupils received a ‘golden key’ which they exchanged for a prize.

It was lovely to see how independent Year 6 pupils were during these challenges and and how confidently all the questions were answered.

 

The children also completed Crossnumbers puzzles. The puzzles worked just like crosswords but with numbers!

Down and across, pupils had place value, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division questions based on the challenges they have decided to complete. It was a fun start to our Maths week activities and children enjoyed completing familiar puzzles in an unfamiliar style.