Author Archives: KW
Paul Fleischmann, The Matchbox Diary
If you enjoyed the themes of The Arrival, this might be a picture book you would enjoy next. There are words in this, but only a few to tie the story together; most of the story focuses on the fascinating individual matchboxes in the collection of a little girl’s great-grandfather. These matchboxes create the diary of his life which he started when he was unable to read or write. His marvellous collection of objects reveal the twists and turns in his life following his immigation to New York from Italy as a child. This makes a thought-provoking and almost poetic tale which sends you on a voyage of discovery. Its themes and images of early twentieth century migration offer an interesting parallel to The Arrival.
Shaun Tan, The Arrival, a review by Meerkat34
The Arrival 
is a heart-warming story about a family of three and… a threat.
When the threat begins to take over the whole town, the father must find a new home for himself and his family. He travels over to a new country which is very strange and different to his old home.
After around a month, the man writes a letter back to his wife and daughter to tell them he will send money when he gets a job.
Two years pass and the family still haven’t reunited! Will they ever meet again?…
This is a great book for any age. I recommend that you discuss the pictures on each page as it really helps you to understand the storyline. I enjoyed this book because the idea of just pictures is fantastic – something really different to books I’ve read before. Also, the illustrations were very well drawn. The book is successful because it has a very strong message about working together with your neighbours – something that made me feel very positive. The author set out to help readers understand what life might be like moving countries and I definitely think he did this: his descriptions of the new country particularly helped this. I would love to be able to read more of Shaun Tan’s books, particularly those that just have pictures.
The Arrival, a review by Koala27
I
found The Arrival a very interesting book to read. Even though this book has no words and is just drawings, it is still very exciting and full of cliff-hangers. This book is full of outstanding black and white portraits that bring the story alive.
The Arrival is a book about a family who are very poor so they send the father to a peculiar world to work. He starts to learn more things about the city and this is when he gets a job and starts sending money back to his family so that they can come to live with him. Two years have passed and he is still waiting for a letter from home…
I found this story very interesting. However, I don’t think I would have enjoyed reading this book as much if I had read it alone as I liked explaining answers from the book with my class. I would recommend this for people of older ages so that they can understand it more. However, for this book you do not have to be able to read but you will still have to be able to understand the drawings.
Many people will find the ideas of a book with no words very strange but, as you start to realise what this book is about, you will become drawn to it and you will never want to stop reading it. I found this book very interesting and suddenly realised how good Shaun Tan’s books really are. Now I am intrigued to read more!
Number lines in disguise
This is another game we tried that you may want to play at home. The idea is to find the missing number on the number line. You can play at several different levels. Start at level 1 and see how far you can get. Be warned! It goes into fractions sometimes so can get rather challenging! Click on the number line to connect to the game.
Maths games to help practise using negative numbers
These games are ones we tried in class today from the NRICH maths site. They are a fun way to practise thinking strategically and using negative numbers in calculations quickly. Click on the images to find and enjoy the games.
Update on Paper folding polygon challenge
We looked at this problem again today and this time tried to investigate the maximum number of sides on a polygon we could create using one fold starting from paper that was different initial polygons.
With one fold, we found the that the biggest polygons we could make were as below:
Starting with a triangle, one fold produced at most a polygon with 7 sides (heptagon)
With a quadilateral (investigated last time), we got a maximum of 9 sides.
With a pentagon, one fold produced a maximum of 11 sides,
Heptagons folded once produced a maximum of 13 sides,
etc.
We think we have a definite pattern now and think we have a general expresssion to describe the largest polygon that can be made from a piece of paper with x sides using n folds now is:
Maximum number of sides in folded polygon = x(n+1) +1
Well done for trying so many good ideas Y6 to investigate this.
Amazing artwork
I can’t resist sharing this astonishing artwork with you which I came across on the BBC website earlier today. This 11-year old is clearly incredibly talented. The drawing above is called ‘Daily Bread’. I hope it inspires you! Click on the image to see the video and learn more about this astonishing young artist.
Paper-folding maths problem
We had a fun maths lesson on Friday which has left us all thinking!
We started with oblong pieces of paper (A5) and the challenge was to see how many 
different polygons we could make using one fold only. We then had to explore the properties of the different shapes and look for symmetry, regularity, etc. We discovered that we could not make a triangle with only one fold, but we could make a variety of quadrilaterals (discussed square (regular quadrilateral), trapezium, creating different parallelograms, etc.).
Once we started looking at higher order polygons, we discovered we could make shapes up to nonagons but none were regular and only the shapes with odd numbers of sides (pentagon, heptagon, nonagon) could be created to have a line of symmetry with one fold.
Next someone suggested seeing how many different polygons they could make with two folds. Some people insisted they could make a tetradecagon (14), but others thought they could only make 13 (triskaidecagon). We are not entirely sure whether we are folding accurately so it would be good to try this again and confirm which is correct.
We decided then that we would spend the weekend investigating this further to see if there is a pattern that we can come up with to predict the maximum number of sides of polygons that can be made with a given number of folds and whether there is a mathematical explanation for this. We are sure there must be but we think we might need help to find out. So far, we think we have a sequence of 1 fold (max 9 side), 2 folds (max 13 sides), 3 folds (17 sides) which looks like there could be a pattern developing but it is getting harder and harder to be sure we have folded correctly which is why we think it would be good to see what other people think. We are wondering whether the increase in 4 each time has also got something to do with the number of sides in our initial shape (the oblong paper). Maybe we could investigate this further using a different polygon to start us off?
I have asked our friends in Year 6 at Long Itchington to see if they can help and am also asking some other people who love maths problems. I’ll let you know if we find out! If you discover anything more, it would be great to add a comment. There is a gold card for anyone coming up with ideas that they can explain to me clearly! We want to crack this before the end of term!
Icelandic breakfast!
I said I would share my attempt at an Icelandic breakfast this morning: oatmeal porridge, skyr, redcurrants and blueberries. It was actually very tasty as well as filling and quite healthy. The only downside (for me!) was that the oatmeal porridge took about 25 minutes to cook (which is quite a bit longer than for ordinary porridge). However, I would probably try this again.