Webinars SET A - Grade 5-6 - Sunday@4:30-5:30pm EST-Recording Webinar 9

Video Transcription

Video Summary

The Math Kangaroo webinar for grade 5-6 focused on hands-on experimentation with shapes involving folding, cutting, and arranging to solve geometry problems. Participants were encouraged to have scissors and handouts for physical manipulation, but strategies for visualization and mental folding were emphasized, relevant for contest conditions where cutting isn’t allowed. The session began with a warmup involving overlapping equilateral triangles to form certain shapes, highlighting which forms could or couldn’t be created.<br /><br />Several problems explored folding paper or shapes multiple times and analyzing cuts or punch holes, requiring reasoning about layers and symmetry. Strategies included drawing unfolding stages, marking fold lines, and imagining rotations without flipping. For example, one task had students determine which folded napkin matched a cutout by examining fold layers and shapes. Another involved identifying the correct net for a box with specific cutouts.<br /><br />More challenging problems involved inferring the arrangement of numbered cells after accordion-style folding or tracing the effect of multiple folds and right-angle cuts on octagonal paper. Bonus questions included calculating the number of holes after multiple fold-and-hole-punch repetitions and counting pieces after iterative cuttings.<br /><br />The instructors stressed careful reading of problem constraints, such as rotations allowed but no flipping, and the importance of practicing physical modeling or detailed sketches to develop spatial reasoning. Upcoming lessons would integrate multiple problem-solving techniques.<br /><br />Overall, the session aimed to build students’ geometric visualization and reasoning skills through interactive experimentation, preparing them for complex problem solving on the Math Kangaroo contest.

Keywords

Math Kangaroo

grade 5-6

geometry problems

folding paper

visualization strategies

spatial reasoning

equilateral triangles

cutting and punching

symmetry analysis

contest preparation