Category Archives: 2.1 Curriculum

Is it playing with shapes? Or discovering Maths?

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When we first walked in to Tara’s class, I quickly spotted the plastic shapes that we would be using during the input. First thoughts: We were getting to play around for the hour. To an extent this was true.

I remember being taught a shape song during primary school, a song that would drive my grandparents wild every time I would sing it – thinking back though, I did sing it a lot. But, ask me to repeat it to you today and I have no idea. I can’t remember any of the tune. I can’t even recall the shapes themselves. So when Tara asked everyone to name the shapes, I stayed quiet. Triangles, squares and rectangles, yes but anything with more than 4 sides and I begin to struggle to recall. However, the more we spoke through them, the more it all started to resonate inside my brain.

 

We soon discovered that shapes which can tessellate are heavily used within Islamic art. I had never thought about shapes within art, never mind religious art. It soon became clear that in order to tessellate shapes had to join up together at a certain point creating an angle of 360 degrees. For example, triangles will tessellate as they will each bring an angle of 90 degrees to the shape, combining to make 360. This allows them to stick together leaving no gaps (shown bellow).  Squares also follow this rule (Shown below).

However, some shapes did not follow this rule and therefore could not tessellate such as pentagons and octagons. We tried to move them around in order to fill each gap, but were not successful. The gaps were too small to fit in another shape. This was interesting as I thought that all shapes would have been able to slot in with each other somehow. I was wrong.

 

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I started to discover that I was enjoying learning about how shapes could influence a piece of art. I have always loved art and regularly try to visit exhibitions and museums whenever I get the chance. So being given the chance to create some of my own was fun. It painted maths in a interesting way that had never been shown to me before.

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I hope to be able to one day incorporate this into a lesson when I have my own class as it is a excellent cross curriculum link between Math, RE and Art. It shows that art isn’t all about painting and drawing, but there is in fact some strategically importance behind decisions made when creating religious art. In my eyes, it paints maths in a practical and important way, one which is of high importance to many people across the world.

YouTube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTeqUejf3D0

Maths……. Dreaded Maths

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I can honestly say that when I think about maths, I get a horrible sick feeling in the very pit of my stomach. There are no nice happy butterflies but instead angry horrible moths banging around trying to run away from the situation at hand.

It wasn’t always like this. At one point in my life I use to love maths. In fact, I couldn’t get enough of it. You could ask all of my primary teachers and I bet they will tell you as I will, I loved maths.

  • I was the child in class who would become beyond competitive when the teacher announced that to fill up the last ten minutes of the day, we would play a game of ‘Around the World’ in a maths context. I had to win. I had to prove my maths skills.
  • I was in the top maths group, and eased through all activities set before me. If someone else was stuck they would come to me for help and advice on how to tackle the tricky puzzle.

I thought I knew how to do maths, I thought it was my friend.

Then, as can happen in some friendships, a silent unknown argument occurred between us and all of a sudden maths was no longer there for me. Long disappeared the sums I could look at and instantaneously see a pathway to an answer. Suddenly, my certificates that I had been given by becoming top reciter of the times tables, had no real value or important in the next establishment of life. But in its place was rigorous maths testing, placement of ability and numbers that made no sense in my mind.

I struggled through, directly in front of me was the biggest mud patch I had ever seen in my life. Wellington boots on at the ready and off I went to try and cross. But with each step I took I struggled to remove my foot afterwards, and as soon as I could remove it to step again I just I sunk deeper and deeper down into the patch. No one to help me out. No one to save me.

I did try to ask for help, don’t get me wrong, I did try. But when you are in that classroom with another 20 odd people who all see no point in maths anyway and mock you for trying to figure out the maths, you stay quiet. Peer pressure at high school in today’s society is such an influencer in how you choose to act. And many people tend to forget this. I know several people who felt judged throughout their high school career and kept silent because of this. Why does it have to be like this? Why can’t we all just enjoy learning without judgement.

I use to feel that I couldn’t show weakness in that class, to me it was like a mathematical Hunger Games, look like you know what you are doing and it will all be okay. But it wasn’t. Yes, I got the grades that I needed in the end but it was an experience that I never want to relive in my life. I was stressed constantly, and what for? All for some numbers. Looking back on it, it shouldn’t have been like that. I wish I could go back and tell myself that it would all be okay someday.

Still to this day, I dread maths because of it all. I become panicked when asked a question so simple that a primary child could answer it. All because of those four years of maths. It seems like such a short amount of time in comparison to life, but to me it seemed to drag on forever. It has influenced how I view maths and trust me, I wish I didn’t have that cloud hovering above me constantly.

I didn’t want to participate in the maths module and I will honestly open my hands up to that fact. When I first viewed the optional module list I automatically said no to maths. There was no thinking needed, it was a no. But in a turn of events it became the module that I found myself on.

I hope that over the course of the next year, I will become more comfortable when it comes to maths. I will be overjoyed just to be able to say I am that tiny bit more confident in my maths skills, or even to have a more positive outlook on maths itself. I feel that this module will be the first step to that, as the module isn’t about how to do maths but instead discovering how maths surrounds us in everyday life.

Image: http://blog.polipay.co.nz/Going%20Mad%20reconciling.jpg

Maths

1 + 2 Approach

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I attended a talk by two teachers, who are part of the implementation of the 1+2 Approach here in the Dundee, Angus, Perth and Kinross area. It proved to be an eye opening talk about how much emphasis is needed to be placed on language learning within primary schools. So far out of the 35 pilot schools chosen to test the approach, 16 are in Dundee which is fantastic! The approach will not be fully in effect until 2020 when it will be implemented across Scotland.

There has been a gradual decline in the number of pupils leaving primary school with a knowledge of any other language than English. Due to this in September 2011, a work group was created to look into this and a report was produced with 55 recommendations of ways in which we should be tackling this problem.

The way the approach will work is :

  • Language 1 = L1 = Mother tongue
  • Language 2 = L2 = First modern language learnt from p1 onwards or earlier to hopefully S3
  • Language 3 = L3 = Second modern language learnt from p5 onwards or earlier to hopefully the end of high school.

(Language 2 has been decided to be French in the majority of schools however this is open to be changed to any language based on the choice of the area/school/teachers)

I believe this is a fantastic idea as we are now in a world that communicates with each other in a multilingual way. We are no longer able to rely on English and we all have to start developing a broader knowledge of languages be it Spanish, French, German or Mandarin, as the ability to speak another language is highly sought after. It has been proven that the best time to learn a language is during the early years when the brain finds it easiest to learn.  Starting to learn languages in primary school from an early age will be a great advantage to all students.
I believe that the 1 + 2 Approach is something that will not only affect the primary school setting, but also high school and further on in life. This approach will make sure that students have a wide range of opportunities available to them post high school, as many universities now want a language as part of admittance to their courses. Also,  for those who do not wish to go into further education the chance to speak the basics of a language when they are abroad will be very beneficial.