Running Maths Week in your school
Does the prospect of coordinating a Maths Day event during Maths Week Ireland seem a little daunting? This guide of resources and ideas aims to alleviate those fears, giving you helpful advice on how to successfully run your very own maths event.
Running Maths Week in your school can be done through time and planning alone. You may decide to have a particular theme for your Maths Day or to use a variety of ideas. Click on the following links to help you plan and organise your schools Maths Day:
Maths Heroes – links to the past
Maths Trails - Walk on the wild side with maths
The Magic of Maths – become a Maths Magician
Code Breaking for the Young Secret Agent
Maths Art – explore the Maths in Art
Top tips for organising maths week:
- Work together with other members of staff in your school – it’s always good to bounce ideas off each other and everyone has their own strengths you can draw on. Having decided upon an idea or theme for your Maths Day involve the students in a brainstorming and decision-making session for ideas on what they would like to do. Set up a smaller team of students to help you plan and create the resources required. Your students will have lots of creative ideas to help.
- Work with your team on the details of each activity. Guide the student team to keep the activities easy to understand.
- You may want to have small prizes or rewards when challenges have been successful completed.
- As part of the Maths Week Ireland you could plan to have a family fun afternoon/evening to celebrate the successes of the week. Give out prizes and/or fun certificates for game winners.
- Have a team of students capture the day on video or in photographs and use this to share the positive experiences of the day.
- If it’s your first time organising a maths day it’s a good idea to keep it simple, and then build on the activities you have found to be most successful year on year.
Tell us about successful events you have run, or if you have any good web resources, suggestions or ideas for Maths please email us at mathsweek@wit.ie and let us know.
Below are also some organisations that can come into your school and run workshops. These however usually do incur a cost and please note that CALMAST has no control over the content of anything listed. Teachers must satisfy themselves as to the suitability of anything listed for their school and class.
Diving for Data
This is a primary school workshop created by marine biology training experts and it raises students’ awareness of different kinds of litter in water environments, and the impact it may have on animals, humans and aquatic habitats. Students learn about sources of marine litter through a variety of discussions with the use of statistics and graphs that will help to describe the amounts of marine debris that is found each year. Students will learn about micro-plastics whilst using mathematical techniques to calculate the amount of plastics consumed by marine wildlife.
This workshop is available for schools throughout the year but if booked during Maths Week you can avail of a 10% discount. Each workshop lasts 60 minutes for a class of 30 pupils and costs €150 for one workshop. Two workshops will cost €240.
Contact education@seiche.com for more information or phone 00353 1695 0549. Please note that there are additional costs if located more than 55km from Fingal, Co. Dublin.
