Maths at Home Newsletter Vol 5 27-04-20

Maths Week Newsletter Vol 5. 27-04-20

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The weather is due to be very mixed this week meaning more time indoors so we will continue our programme for home learning. These activities are selected to be suitable for the home learning environment. We hope that our resources delivered via the web and social media will be a help to many. See below for a taste of what's to come this week. Please share this newsletter with parents.

In this weeks Maths at Home Newsletter

Preview of Daily Maths Activities
What's On
Maths in Media
Daily Schedule
Targetboards

Our circulation list has grown to over 9,000 subscribers
We have sent 4 weekly newsletters (with a break for Easter).

We now have 6,188 followers on twitter and in last 28 days we have 283,000 impressions

Go to MathsWeek.ie

Maths Week Ireland Daily Schedule

8am Targetboards open
9am Activity of the Day
12pm Maths Challenge
1pm & 1:30pm Daily Maths Puzzle
5pm Maths at Home info

See details for programmes here

Preview of Maths activities scheduled for this week:
This week our hands-on maths activities range from arithmetic and measure to logic and problem-solving puzzles that will have the whole family engaged! We would love to see how you recreate these rich mathematical resources using objects you have in your home.

Follow us on social media and share your creations.
All the details and instructions will go live on
www.mathsweek.ie at 6pm the previous day.

Daily Maths Activities

We bring you a new maths activity of the day each morning on our Maths at Home Activity page.

Today’ Activity:
Art of Shapes: Create an art piece that is made of squares, triangles, and rectangles. This activity combines maths and crafts and will enable primary school children to familiarise themselves with the properties of squares and their lines of symmetry.

Tuesday:
This card game involving subtraction, will have participants develop their problem-solving strategies. Place the numbers 1 to 15 into a triangle so that each card is the difference between the two cards immediately below it.

Wednesday:
Can you make square numbers by adding two prime numbers together?
This Nrich activity will have children practicing their problem-solving skills as well as broadening and developing their maths vocabulary.

Thursday:
Crossing the river - This fun activity will have all the family using logic and reasoning skills to get the farmer and his animals safely across the river. This puzzle offers a great opportunity to discuss problem solving strategies:
Observe & Wonder, Trial & error, Recap & Plan, Check & Justify

Friday:
Matchstick Problems are a great activity to develop critical thinking and problem solving. Of course, matchsticks are not suitable for young children so swap them for other materials lying around the house.

2^nd May
To commemorate the 501^st anniversary of Leonardo Di Vinci’s death we want to draw your attention to the “Vitruvian Man”: a master piece drawn Di Vinci but which uses proportions of the human body that were first written down by a roman author over 2000 years ago.
Investigate the details behind the Vitruvian Man by measuring height, arm span, and then representing and interpreting this data.

Follow us on social media each day for updates:
Facebook: @MathsWeek
Twitter: @mathsweek
Instagram: MathsIreland
LinkedIn: Maths Week Ireland
Get in touch, give feedback, why not share your ideas and resources?

Maths Learning Resources

Dublin Zoo is working with RTE to bring you some fantastic virtual learning via their Home School Hub. Kelly delivers an insight to life in the closed Zoo with short videos on different animal themes such as communication, enrichment and adaptations.

Tune in each day this week at 11am on RTÉ Junior (RTÉ2). Each video has an accompanying fun worksheet which can be downloaded from RTE’s Home School Hub www.rte.ie/learn/

What's on

28^th April:
Chris Budd OBE, Gresham Professor of Geometry and frequent visitor to Maths Week Ireland will be presenting his lecture, entitled Equations That Have Changed The World.
He will discuss the maths relevant to the current Covid-19 situation, in particular the SIR model for the spread of disease and the use of control measures where there is a delay between the control and the effect (which can lead to some very odd behaviour).
This lecture is an hour long and available to stream and watch back online from 1pm tomorrow. No reservations are required for this lecture. It will be run on a ‘first come, first served’ basis. Doors will open 30 minutes before the start of the lecture.
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/world-changing-equations

Gresham College is a college with no students. It was established in 1597 under the will of Sir Thomas Gresham, and it hosts over 140 free public lectures every year. There are many lectures available on this site which may be of interest to older students.

30^th April: Talking Maths in “Lockdown”
Talking Maths in Public is a conference which runs in the UK every two years, for people who work in, or otherwise participate in, communicating mathematics in public. This year’s event can not take place in public, so the organisers have decided to host “talking maths in Lockdown” instead. The first of the six online sessions will begin this Thursday at 3pm. For more information about the topics to be covered and how you can join in follow this link:
http://talkingmathsinpublic.uk/

1^st May: Maths in the Early Years: Making Maths Count
For primary school teachers interested in continuing their professional development in the area of developing mathematical thinking in young children then check out this free online course beginning this week. Led by mathematics consultant Elaine Bennett, this 4 day work group will lead participants through the progression of mathematical concepts in the Early Years.

Although usually only available within the catchment area of Bexley, Greenwich, Lewisham and Southwark, this CPD opportunity is currently available online to individuals in the UK with early year students.

Register your interest with the London South East Maths Hub here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/wg2-maths-in-the-early-years-making-maths-count-tickets-64670939521?aff=ebdssbdestsearch

2^nd May: Leonardo Da Vinci anniversary
This weekend marks the 501^st anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death. Everyone knows Leonardo da Vinci the painter but how many realise that he was a great engineer, scientist and had a great interest in mathematics?
“The merit of painting lies in the exactness of reproduction. Painting is a science and all sciences are based on mathematics.” Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo had an extraordinary intelligence, seemingly able to imagine extraordinarily complex three-dimensional figures in his mind. This made him the great artist he was and enabled him to imagine and draw great engineering inventions.

MATHS IN THE MEDIA

Thanks to Zalafilms and the May12 Initiative, there is a free screening of “Secrets of the Surface” available through the following link
https://may12.womeninmaths.org/screening-secrets
This film follows the life and mathematical work of Maryam Mirzakhani, an Iranian Immigrant to the United States who became both the first woman and the first Iranian to be honoured with a Fields Medal, mathematics highest prize.

John Horton Conway
by Colm Mulcahy

Colm Mulcahy is on the advisory board for Maths Week Ireland. He is professor of mathematics at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, and vice-president of the Gathering 4 Gardner Foundation. Read his piece on John Horton Conway here:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/apr/23/john-horton-conway-obituary

Daily Schedule

See Maths at Home for more

8 am: Daily Targetboards open (see below)
9 am: A maths ‘Activity of the Day ’ using household materials. Please share your children’s work using the hashtag #MathsAtHome and check out the hashtag to see other’s work and interact with them.
12 pm: A Maths Challenge – this activity will have your family searching for mathematically interesting items and sharing them. Today is to find Movie Titles with Numbers
1 pm & 1:30 pm: A ‘Daily Maths Puzzle’ to develop flexibility in mathematics. The Licence plate game: There are plates each day for North and South
5pm: . Each day we will share an Afternoon Resource recommending websites, informative articles, webinars and resources that are useful for engaging students during the school closures.

Targetboards

Target Boards:
Can your class get on the Leaderboard?

Target Boards are proving to be quite popular with some schools during Lockdown. There have been over 13,000 answers submitted since the beginning of April .
Target Boards are a great fun way for your class to practice arithmetic. Even if you don't make the leaderboard it's still great fun. You can register for a class code and share the link with your class or with parents the code will work each day. It’s a great way to engage students and get their competitive streak working again! Players go to the Targetboard schedule and click on the active board.
We will publish the daily leaderboard at 3pm everyday on social media to show how the competition is going.

Follow us on social media each day for updates:
Facebook: @MathsWeek
Twitter: @mathsweek
Instagram: MathsIreland
LinkedIn: Maths Week Ireland
Get in touch, give feedback, why not share your ideas and resources?

Maths Week Ireland, Calmast, STEM Outreach Hub,

Cork Road Campus, Waterford Institute of Technology, Waterford

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