Treasure trove
This is a level 3 geometry activity from the Figure It Out theme series. A PDF of the student activity is included.
About this resource
Figure It Out is a series of 80 books published between 1999 and 2009 to support teaching and learning in New Zealand classrooms.
This resource provides the teachers' notes and answers for one activity from the Figure It Out series. A printable PDF of the student activity can be downloaded from the materials that come with this resource.
Specific learning outcomes:
- Use coordinates to describe and locate positions.
Treasure trove
Achievement objectives
GM3-5: Use a coordinate system or the language of direction and distance to specify locations and describe paths.
Required materials
- Figure It Out, Levels 2–3, Theme: Under the Sea, "Treasure trove", pages 6–7
- a classmate
- cardboard, scissors, and multilink cubes
- two photocopies of the grid (one for each player) in the student book
See Materials that come with this resource to download:
- Treasure trove game (.pdf)
Activity
Game
This game is a version of the traditional game Battleships, which uses ordered pairs on a coordinate grid to specify position. Since the “treasure chests” are represented by multilink cubes, which have an area of 2 cm x 2 cm, students can think strategically about which coordinates (ordered pairs) to choose.
- For example, finding out that B 2 is not a coordinate for a treasure chest effectively eliminates the coordinates A 1, A 2, and B 1. If E 2 is also not a coordinate for a chest, that effectively eliminates C 1, C 2, D 1, D 2, and E 1.
Note that this strategy is good for locating the approximate position of treasure chests, but to finish the game, students must give all four corner coordinates of each chest.
An interesting variation of the game is for students to use 16 unit place-value cubes to make four "gold nuggets". These nuggets can take any shape the player wants them to within the squares.
For example:
Game
A game using coordinates
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