The Year sixes have been investigating how to write algebraic sums in Maths this week, with a little help from some milk bottle tops and Harry Potter!!

The children had to make potions (P) made up of legs of certain animals, including spiders (S), bats (B) and lizards (L). To help with their learning, the bottle tops were used to represent the different animals in the potion. If they wrote the algebraic sum correctly (Mr Pollard’s potion needed a potion requiring 32 legs) it would turn the teacher into a frog! An example which Sammy developed was: 2S + L + 6B = P

I never really like algebra before, but now I feel more confident – Lilly

NB: No teachers were harmed in the making of this lesson.