Thank you to everyone who has been sharing on Twitter what you got up to in this year's extended Maths Week Scotland. In particular, we have really enjoyed seeing the different ways everyone was inspired by this year's theme of 'Maths in Motion'. It was difficult to choose any favourites, but we've picked out a few of our highlights.
Sport & P.E.
Unsurprisingly, sports featured heavily in everyone's Maths in Motion activities, with many schools choosing to incorporate it in to their P.E. lessons, for example through measuring or timing their P.E. activities. We also loved seeing schools getting creative in their P.E. lessons, such as the pupils from St Margaret's Primary who used their bodies to create shapes.
Today for @mathsweekscot we investigated maths in sports. We loved the video @EilishMccolgan recorded. We measured our playground, timed ourselves running and tomorrow we’ll work out how long it would take us to run a mile…and maybe a marathon! ✖️➕🧭 pic.twitter.com/9vyWdgQ8pM
We also had a lot of schools tweeting about penalty predictors, which was one of the recurring activities in this year's Maths in Motion video series produced by the Scottish Mathematical Council in collaboration with the Scottish Football Association.
#Primary6 are enjoying an early #MathsWeekScotland - we have been participating in the #MathsinMotion challenges set by the Scottish Mathematics Council. Our favourite so far is the penalty predictor using our knowledge of fractions & percentages. pic.twitter.com/8r7mTC8dq3
Our most tweeted about event was the 'Multiple Heartbeats' workshop run by Maths on Toast, which looked at the link between maths and exercise. Pupils learned about their pulse, and how to measure and record data about their heartbeats before and after different kinds of exercise.
— St Peter's RC Primary School Edinburgh (@St_Peters_Edin) October 3, 2023
Dance
Closely related to P.E. and Sports, and coming a close second in most mentioned activities, was dance. We loved seeing all the different schools getting their groove on, from learning how beat and movement are used in music and dance, to creating dance moves for numbers and functions or having a school wide danceathon.
Engineering and mechanics are full of maths and moving parts, so it came as no surprise to see lots of schools getting busy with construction projects. There were lots of paper planes flying around (which again was an activity in this year's Scottish Mathematical Council Maths in Motion video series) and some paper rockets too, as well as projects designing, building and testing everything from marble runs and racing tracks, to car ramps and skate parks.
Today’s big Maths Week Scotland challenge for our Primary 3 pupils was linked to the theme ‘Maths in Motion’. They had to work as a team to build a track and then use directional language to help their peers guide a sphero around it. @mathsweekscot#MWSRENpic.twitter.com/oJEeG1RNav
There's lots of maths to think about when creating stop motion videos, such as angles, rations and scales. We really enjoyed seeing the stop motion videos that schools created and shared with us.
Maths in Motion. Today R8 learned how pixar characters are created using coordinates, addition and multiplication and we tried out start/stop movie making, thinking about angles and movement. #MathsWeekScotlandpic.twitter.com/RT0zqOa9Ne
— Saint Charles’ Primary & LCR (@StCharlesGla) October 3, 2023
Outdoor Learning
Maths outside is always a big winner during Maths Week Scotland! Just by moving around outdoors you are already setting your maths in motion, with some schools taking their PE lessons outside too. Other schools organised number or shapes hunts outside, or used map work and orienteering to practice positional and directional language. We were also delighted to spot our 30 Days Wild maths resources being used.
We took Maths in Motion outside as part of @mathsweekscot. Children used paint🎨to predict and then count how many footprints they could make while running, jumping and skipping before the paint ran out 👣👢👣 Lots of fun and laughter while moving and counting! 🧮#MathsInMotionpic.twitter.com/CIwwJa4TCw
We love it when schools incorporate Maths Week Scotland across the curriculum. This year we saw quite a few schools combining maths and language classes, including German, French, Spanish and Italian.
After learning the compass points in French last week, P6/7 were using compasses to find North. We then had different instruction cards to follow the directions. Where would we end up? @mathsweekscot@SBCNumeracypic.twitter.com/gM5rxIRgdv
In the week preceding Maths Week Scotland, one teacher shared a fun idea for learning multiplication in a playful way through bowling. This proved to be popular and we saw quite a few schools pick up this idea during Maths Week itself, so thought we would include the original post here:
Playful Multiplication 🎳
10 mins setup, 50 mins learning. Great way to recap tables & addition in one go.
Wee on the hoof task at the end ‘whoever scores exactly 84 wins us a class point!’ - lots of estimating, mental calculations & joined up thinking#playinupperprimarypic.twitter.com/k2kBOy5F4D
This school created posters to show maths in motion in different ways. We also held a Maths in Motion poster competition earlier in the year, with all the amazing winners featuring in this year's Maths Week Scotland countdown.
We finish off our Maths in Motion highlights with another look at maths in sports, and a huge thank you to Dundee FC for being such good sports and supporting Maths Week Scotland!
Keep sharing your maths related activities with us all year round on Twitter with the hashtag #MathsWeekScot!
It's Spring in Edinburgh means, which means the return of the Edinburgh Science Festival (30 March - 14 April)! This years theme is Shaping the Future, and we've browsed through the programme to pick out some of our maths highlights for you.
To mark World Meteorological Day (23 March), we are delighted to share a guest post from Professor Sylvia Knight, Head of Education at the Royal Meteorological Society, to introduce their new Climate Change Concept tool and show how teachers can use it to support maths in the curriculum.
