In this week’s news:

• Year 10A Maths Extension at LTC
• Fake Or Fortune??
• Painting recreations – New Photography

Year 10A Maths Extension at LTC

Lake Tuggeranong College is offering current Year 10A students the opportunity for extension in Mathematics in a series of after school sessions.  The program aims to provide students who wish to study Mathematical Methods or Specialist Mathematics in Year 11 at college with a smoother transition into college Mathematics.

The program is open to students who are enrolling in Lake Tuggeranong College or Erindale College in 2021.  Our first session in Week 3 of semester two saw 18 enthusiastic students from eight different high schools attend and our numbers have continued to grow since then.

The main curriculum focus is Algebra, with the intention of ensuring that students’ skills in the manipulation of variables and curve sketching are strong as this will allow students to focus their attention on the new work that they are learning next year in Year 11.  Towards the end of the semester we will introduce students to the Year 11 curriculum so that they have a head start for next year.

This week, as one of the extension activities, we explored some puzzles with an algebraic solution.  After working on the Frogs and Lilypads puzzle and the Tower of Hanoi puzzle, students used their pattern finding skills to write an algebraic rule linking the number of items to the minimum number of moves. This was not an easy process as both rules were non-linear, so the algebraic expressions required the use of indices.  It was very impressive to see the resilience, logical reasoning and problem solving skills demonstrated by this Year 10 cohort of students.

Frogs and Lilypad’s puzzle (red frogs can only move to the right, green frogs can only move to the left.  A frog can only jump to an adjacent vacant lilypad or jump over one frog of a different colour to a vacant lilypad.  There is a mathematical relationship between the number of frogs of one colour and the minimum number of moves)

Tower of Hanoi puzzle (move all the discs from A to C by moving one disc at a time to another rod.  A larger disc cannot be placed on top of a smaller disc.  There is a mathematical relationship between the number of discs and the minimum number of moves)

Fake or Fortune – Girls with the Pearl Earring

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New paintings by our art students plays with the idea of gaining inspiration from earlier artists. The art students have explored Vermeer’s painting from 1665, Girl with a Pearl Earring. This is Vermeer’s most famous painting although it is not a portrait because it is a painting of an imaginary figure. When artists’ paint an imaginary figure it is called a “Tronie”.

Painting Recreations – New photography

Recreation of famous paintings in the style of Tableau Vivant Photography.