This week in Maths, Year 6 have started looking at algebra. We quickly learnt that algebra is where you can replace numbers with letters or symbols, and that you can use algebra to represent rules or patterns between numbers.

To start the topic, we used a range of maths resources to help solve a problem of finding the pattern between 3 different sized rectangles, and to predict the next two rectangles in that pattern. The resources helped us to recreate the problem and calculate the pattern straight away, noticing that the height and width increased by 1 unit each time.

We then started to consider how we could use letters to represent patterns between numbers. We’ve learnt that a letter, for example x, could represent any number, and that we can express what happens to a number using an algebraic expression such as x +4 or y – 8.

Excellent resourceful and resilient learning Year 6!