It is phenomenal to think just how big the universe out with us actually is. I didn’t even realise this until it was explained to me in a mathematics workshop I was participating in. I also in the beginning, never thought about how I would explain this subject to children. I had just assumed it would work out.

The guest speaker that we had from Dundee science centre explained scaling the different areas in space to us in order to understand just how far apart the different planets are away from each other while making it an understandable concept. Scaling the different planets out using the Tay Bridge was a fantastic idea. This is something perhaps school children can relate to that live in Dundee. Round Scotland this could be used with landmarks nearer each school. This is in order to make the fundamental mathematics understandable for not only children, but others who do not understand a lot about space.

Different sized balls were used such as huge exercise balls to very small ping pong balls in order to see just how big some planets were in comparison to others. By getting the class to guess at the beginning how small we believe some planets are using our hands, made me think how good this would be to first get the children to guess what size they believe the planets are first.

I believe if I had undertaken this topic in primary school myself. I would have understood a lot more about it and very much enjoyed myself.

Between the galaxies, planets, and scaling.  I never thought I would find it as interesting as I did. I am now very keen to learn more on this in order to be capable of teaching this topic to a primary school class.

No country is the same when it comes to looking at league tables of results in schools worldwide. Chinese teachers typically begin their careers with a better understanding of elementary maths than teachers from the U.S is what Lipping Ma found from her research. They may attain higher grades than certain countries. Lipping Ma is a researcher who looked into a profound understanding of fundamental mathematics. Copious amounts of research was carried out, comparing and contrasting education between the two countries China and America. Her theory has four elements which are key to understand when looking at her research. The first, being basic principles. This may look into if it is understandable and if there is different ways to prove something correct. The second principle that was looked into by Lipping Ma was the connectedness involved in mathematics. This is when the teacher begins to feel that it is a necessity to make connections and links into the mathematics the children are learning and stress their importance. Thirdly there is multiple perspectives. This looks at different solutions in order to solve a problem and what are the best and worst ways to use, or the advantages and disadvantages to using different methods. This is to give children the understanding that there is more than one way. Lastly there is the fourth stage which is longitudinal coherence. This is where the teachers review where the pupils’ in their class are within fundamental mathematics and if they are advancing within the curriculum. The teacher can then begin to look at different areas and decide what they think is a key concept in order to teach their class.

In our discovering mathematics workshop, we spoke about the “golden ratio”. At first I found this quite difficult to think about however the more examples that Anna Robb gave made it easier to understand. We carried out tasks such as drawing our own version of a piece of art work inspired by Mondrian and taking measurements of each other on different parts of our bodies to see who in the class was ‘the most beautiful’ or who in the class’s body was most in proportion. This can also be known as “The golden ratio”.

The golden ratio has been used throughout history to measure many different works of art which have made many mathematicians’ interested in different works of art and different architecture.  For example, the golden ratio was used to design the Notre Dame in Paris, France. I found this very interesting to learn as before I have never really thought about the maths involved in different art work.

Incorporating mathematics and art together within a classroom environment can be done. I had again never really thought of this until looking at the golden ratio in the workshop. A lesson could perhaps be to draw a picture, however before the class starts, fold the paper a certain way in order to make the picture a specific way so that each final piece is in proportion with each other and similar in a number of ways.

As much as I felt this was a fascinating way to design architecture and different pieces of art work in the world, after trying out a few drawings and different activities, I worked out that trying to get the golden ratio completely correct in a drawing can be more difficult than initially thought. I attempted to draw a spiral which the first couple of attempts ended up incorrect, after Anna showed us how it was meant to be done, and began to explain that we needed compasses in order to get the spiral accurate, I began to see what I was doing wrong, even though we were given the answer, I still fond the task difficult.

Overall I found this workshop worthwhile and interesting in a number of ways. I now understand how maths and art are connected to each other and how some mathematicians show an interest in art because of the maths involved with the making of it. It was quite a challenging concept to get a hold of at first but after the explanations that were given in the class it did begin to make a lot more sense.