World of Tan 8 - Sports Car
Can you fit the tangram pieces into the outline of the sports car?
Age
7 to 11
Challenge level
Problem
This activity follows on from World of Tan 7 - Golden Goose.
Mr Cheung's plaque had still not been found. In between other removals and scheduled deliveries, every spare moment had been spent looking for the missing plaque. Granma T no longer blamed the workers or the children or Mah Ling - she didn't know where it could be.
It was the end of the day, and everyone was sat in the office thinking about what to do next. They only had a few more days before Mr Cheung's deadline was reached. Then, parts of the removals business would have to be sold to pay for the replacement plaque.
Mr Cheung and his cousin had spent the anxious days since the move searching and searching for the plaque, but to no avail. He had even offered a reward for its safe return, but there was still no news. As it was a family heirloom passed down from his grandfather, Mr Cheung was reluctant to order a replacement and give up on finding the original plaque, but he didn't know what else to do.
It was at the end of this dismal day when Mr Cheung screeched into the yard in his red sportscar. He was clearly agitated and was wildly waving a piece of paper in the air.
"Granma T, Granma T," he shouted, getting out his car and striding across the yard. "Look, you are not to blame!"
Onto the table he thrust a single sheet of paper. It was a ransom note, demanding one million Chinese yuan in exchange for the safe return of the plaque!
In the meantime, complete the silhouette of Mr Cheung's red sports car using a double tangram (two sets of the tangram).
Extra activities:
- Can you write down the number 'one million' in digits? What do you know about the number? Have you been alive for at least one million seconds?
- Find out how much money one million Chinese yuan is in some other currencies. How many US dollars would it be? How many pounds sterling?
The story continues in World of Tan 9 - Animals.
Teachers' Resources
Why do this problem?
This problem is an engaging context in which pupils can consolidate their knowledge of the properties of squares, triangles and parallelograms. By attempting this activity, children will be putting into practise their visualising skills, making guesses about where the different shapes might go before trying out their ideas. When combining the shapes to make the tangram, pupils will use their understanding of translations, reflections and rotations to decide how to transform each shape. There are also links between tangrams and fractions, and children can be encouraged to work out what fraction of the whole square is represented by each smaller shape.Possible approach
Read this story with the whole class and look at the tangram as a group. Ask pupils to suggest where a shape might go. What transformation would be needed to move the shape into that position?When pupils are solving the tangram, they would benefit from working in pairs with a tablet or a printed copy of the shapes to cut out and move around. Working together will lead to rich discussions about the possible options for where each shape can go. When the children have solved the tangram, they can have a go at the extra activities.
At the end of the lesson, bring all of the pupils together and model the solution on the whiteboard. How does each shape need to be transformed? What fraction of the whole picture is each shape?
Key questions
What could you put with this piece to make a square?Are all of the pieces different?
What's the smallest square you can make?
What has to go in that space? How do you know?