KS2

Take your maths work outdoors... Some interesting resources and ideas from GoogolPower.

Earth Day Maths

This is a useful measuring activity for Key Stage 2 children. the work has potential for excellent cross-curricula links to geography, design, pshe and citizenship.

Get the children to work in small groups to design an 'ideal' playground based on the school's existing playground. First they discuss what they would like to see/use in an ideal playground. They could design the area for themselves, or for an identified group. more >>

A very useful article for anyone using (or creating) a maths trail.

Avril Crack (nrich.maths.org) explores the learning potential Maths Trails offers learners of all ages. Trails can provide a clear context for learning; and their scope is endless, since they can be adjusted to fit within almost any theme or cross-curricula topic.

Meaningful Maths Trails [nrich.maths.org]

Working with the outdoors provides us with the space to teach maths in some truly imaginative ways. This is at the core of enabling learners to see how mathematics is part of the world around them. The challenge of working in the outdoor environment can also help learners to 'take risks' and be more willing to share ideas or offer suggestions than in more 'traditional' teaching situations. more >>

Find out how one school in Morocco is using a grove of olive trees planted in their school playground to teach students about maths.

The students care for the trees, harvest the oil, visit the camel-driven olive press and sell the resulting oil in their local market, all using maths. more >>

After extensive work on different types of graph and chart, we went down to the local woods and allowed the children to come up with questions realted to woods. If you click the attached file you will be able to see the what types of questions the children came up with. Getting real data made a massive diffferce and they all produced bar charts, line graphs and one group even did a radar chart to track locations of trees! Really great!

Following this weekend's Great Garden Birdwatch and with Spring just around the corner (I've always been an optimist), it might be opportune to set up a bird table or bird feeder(s) within sight of a classroom window to do a bit of statistical analysis on the avian visitors. more >>

The canopy of a tree can provide a great deal of mathematical starting points. Just consider its area, how much ground surface does it cover?

You can set this as an investigation for a group of children. Let them come up with their own solutions... or talk to them about 'mapping' the shape onto the ground. more >>

Here are the worksheets used as part of the Outdoor CPD session. The pdf file contains 10 sheets covering mathematical concepts of symmetry, measures, estimation and pattern investigation. They should make useful starting points for developing further activities.

If you are logged in, you will be able to download the pdf file from this link.

Symmetry is part of nature - this activity is designed to help children to identify the symmetrical properties of leaves.

This is an ideal activity for a woodland walk, but if you have access to a number of different trees and plants around your school, then it will be possible to undertake this task on the school grounds. more >>