World of Tan 4 - Monday Morning
This activity follows on from World of Tan 3 - Mah Ling.
It is Monday morning, the start of another week. Three men are approaching the yard of Granma T's removal firm, as they do every day. One man is slightly ahead of the other two who are dawdling.
Here is Wai Ping:
Here is his cousin, Wu Ming:
Lastly, here is Chi Wing, the supervisor:
The oldest man, Chi Wing, turns round to tell the others to hurry up. After all, he is the supervisor and it is his job to make sure everyone else does their jobs.
Wai Ping, the youngest man, continues to whistle and doesn't hear the supervisor. Wu Ming always listens to Chi Wing, and he begins to jog into the office. He then puts the kettle on for tea as he always does at the start of every workday.
Chi Wing and Wai Ping enter the office together and they look at the job sheets for the week. These have been prepared by Mah Ling, who does not arrive for work until later. There are plenty of jobs listed for the next few days, and Wai Ping groans about all the work they've got to do. He is still tired from his weekend, and he isn't looking forward to a hard week of work!
Once the tea has been made, all three workers sit down around the large office table and begin to plan exactly how the jobs for the week are to be done.
In the meantime, complete the silhouettes of all three workers.
Extra activities:
- Work out the ages of the workers, using the following information: all three are under 30 years of age; there are four years between the two cousins; there is a decade between the youngest and oldest man; the sum of their ages is a prime number.
- Make a list of all the people who are in your family - your aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents and other family members. Have a go at making a family tree of all your relatives.
The story continues in World of Tan 5 - Dragon.
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?