Evaluation Session 4 - Place value/Number systems

Did this session achieve its aims?  I'm not sure how well defined the aims of this session were. Much of the planning is something like a sculpture.  I start preparing activities without fully seeing the kind of experience I hope to create.  This continues into the sessions where I am always hoping for inspiration to help determine the next step.

We started by looking at the numbers that form the sequence of powers of 2.  Some of the explorers new about the game 2048 and so could say something about that and others could work out other interesting things to say about them.  Many others did not contribute.  I wonder what is best in these situations.  A think-pair-share routine might be a good thing to use for these parts.  Or think-pair-group-share. This could be linked with a badge acknowledgement system.  Contribution is not for everyone and it may be that allowing people not to contribute is just what they need.  Exploration must happen outside a comfort zone but by what means should someone get there.  And which part of the comfort zone should they be outside?  All of it?  unlikely but for the most hardened explorer and then that is probably just a different comfort zone.
I digress.
We went on to use the numbers in a slider game something like 2048.  This worked well and I noticed that girls and boys had very different approaches for this game.  Not surprisingly, boys tended to be competitive and girls collaborative. (or maybe that is surprising).
It worked well for all the groups and they managed to achieve at least up to 32 on each table.  The idea here was to get used to doubling these numbers and understanding their value in relation to each other.
We went on to look at exploding dots 2 to 1.  The challenge was set.  What is the maximum number of cubes that you can put in the system so that no cubes are pushed out side of the grid.  Google exploding dots to see how it works if this makes no sense.  There were still issues using this idea butt quite a few made good discoveries (including the set up discovery that any time there was just one cube, it corresponded to the numbers from the game.  That would have made a good challenge question.  What numbers end up with just one cube somewhere in the grid?
from there we looked briefly at the binary calculator and how to calculate to and from binary.  To give explorers a chance to use it, I set up some codes using the ascii grid.  Explorers tried to create some codes and two of them broke my code.
A varied and active session, with games, challenges and questioning
Almost a model maths explorers session.