Maths Workshop

It was interesting doing something different to 'normal' maths!

Our session started with Year 4 pupils teaching the Year 3 pupils about factors. After trying a few examples, the children were taught about a special group of numbers called 'abundant numbers'; these are numbers where the sum of their factors (excluding the number itself) is greater than the number itself. Having tried a few examples, the children then set about exploring numbers 1-20 to try to find which ones were abundant.

This sparked a lot of animated discussion and further interesting questions such as:

• What about numbers that only have one pair of factors?
• Are all odd numbers prime?
• Is 1 a prime number? What about 2?
• Which numbers are more likely to be abundant?
• Which numbers are more likely to be prime?
• What if the sum of the factors is exactly the same as the number itself?

The children then learnt that numbers that are exactly equal to the sum of their factors are called 'perfect numbers'. The hunt was on to find a perfect number! There was even a squeal in one of the sessions when one was discovered!

We were really impressed by some children's ability to form generalisations and explain their thinking:

Prime numbers will nearly all be odd because even numbers can always be divisible by 2,

 By Amelie S, Year 3

Prime numbers cannot be abundant!

 By Megan S, Year 4

The children had some time to explore their ideas using a hundred square to keep track of what they had found out. Although there was not time for the children to test out all their ideas, they were very focussed in their search, with many children asking if they could continue exploring the patterns at home.