Mathematics, Science and Health Education research centre

Maths outside the classroom

On June 7th, 2013 Ruth Edwards and Christian Bokhove ran a “Mathematics outside the classroom” day with PGCE and SKE+ students. On this day students started with a fraction relay, went out do do some readymade outside maths activities, and then used these for inspiration for making their own trails. Every group made a four-node maths trail for Year 10, and in the afternoon the trails were swapped between the groups. This dedicated page is used for the resources and the results.

Students were given this document for outside maths ideas:

The introductory slides and the planning for the day are here.

The discussion extended the range of the examples, like other apps for smartphones, geocaching ideas etc. After evaluating the trails for ‘best practices’ it was clear that good trails preferably are/have: open ended, related to real-life, engaging, linked or themed narrative, a different range of maths skills needed, and a variety of tasks.

The resulting maths trails:

• Group A: groupA_mathstrailsoton
• Group B: groupB_mathstrailsoton
• Group C: groupC_mathstrailsoton
• Group D: groupD_mathstrailsoton
• Group E: groupE_mathstrailsoton
• Group F: groupF_mathstrailsoton

I’m going to try and combine the ideas and trails in one Google Maps application. Pictures of the day in the Facebook group here.