Working with Mental Images

Current

Working with Mental Images

We often do not make the most of our students' potential to create powerful mental images. This set of tasks is intended to challenge students to work with their own and others' mental images and record their visualisations in order to solve the problems.

The solutions may not be immediately obvious, but we hope the engaging contexts will encourage students to persevere.

Frogs

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

This problem requires students to visualise, work systematically, and develop good representations.

ACE, TWO, THREE...

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

The engaging nature of this trick means that students are often prepared to persevere on this task. It may offer a chance to nurture a sense of resilience amongst your students.

Constructing Triangles

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

As well as offering students practice in constructing triangles, this problem leads to geometrical insights into the triangle inequality.

Attractive Tablecloths

Stage: 4 Challenge Level:

This problem encourages students to look at the structure of several symmetric patterns and explain how to generate rules for finding the number of colours required.