Friday, February 7, 2014

Forgetting about square roots (not)

We've tried to forget about square roots in Year 4G. But it hasn't worked.
We'd noticed that  symbol on the calculator. Mr Gregg had mentioned what it meant, and then said, "forget about that; it's not really a Year 4 thing. No really, forget about it."

But the class didn't forget. And not only were they lamentably poor at forgetting, to make matters worse, from time to time they would chant, "Square root! Square root!" 
"I'm glad you've probably forgotten what that even means," Mr Gregg would say then.

But the class aren't quite as good at forgetting as they are at some other subjects (more forgetting lessons needed!), so it hasn't gone away.


Today Mr Gregg gave in and the class talked again about square roots. Everyone (sigh!) seemed to remember what they were. We looked again at the multiplication square we'd made,


finding the square numbers. Then we checked on the square roots of them.

√100 = 10
√81 = 9

and so on. A forest of hands went up. A complete failure to forget!

Then we had a look at how a square number and its diagonal neighbour up and to the right are related.



And to round up the lesson, a little algebra.


Maybe, now it's all out in the open, we can all relax and forget a bit more comfortably.

13 comments:

  1. I will never forget about square root!

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    1. Oh dear, it's all gone horribly wrong...

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    2. I think no one in year 4 forgot about square root!

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  2. Funny how Maia seems to be excellent at forgetting other things, like her spellings or tidying her room : ) Still, glad at least the square root lesson's there to stay.
    (Maia's Mum!)

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    1. Maybe Pablo's wrong then. Maybe Maia had forgotten about square roots and was just pretending to have remembered them?

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    2. But Maia would be pretty angry with you guys, you are talking about some personal things...

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    3. I'm hoping Maia will come and put us right!

      (Mimi, it's great that you are thinking along these lines.)

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  3. Don't worry Mimi, Maia is actually rather proud of being so excellent at forgetting to tidy up. I wouldn't post anything about her without her knowing : ) (Maia's Mum)

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  4. Forgetting is in a dance with Remembering. These two States are not in opposition as some would have us believe. Embrace forgetfulness and you find yourself holding a memory. Excellent work Mr Grogg... er..what was your name again?

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  5. That looks really fun! forgetting about things! I love to do that!

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    1. I'll ask Mrs Baldwin to tell you about square roots so you can forget about it. If you love forgetting, hopefully you'll be a bit better than 4G were!

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  6. My aunt told me about square routes in Y3!

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    1. We might have to get you to tell 4B about square roots, so we can see if they are any better at forgetting than 4G were!

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