Here’s a little idea for a team activity that could get quite competitive and hopefully “fun”. I haven’t tried it yet, and it might be a while before I use this. When I do, I’ll try to update this post with any tweaks depending on how it runs.
It’s based a on this really simple website Is This Prime created by@christianp which I saw on Jo Morgan’s MathsGems.
It presents you with numbers and you click YES (i.e. it is Prime) or NO. It’s not an app so it can be used on a laptop / desktop although it works really well on browser on a tablet. I’ll be doing this in a computer room as a group activity.
I reckon this could work with classes from Year 5 to Year 8, but most pupils in the class will need to have a reasonably good grasp on their times tables or it could be frustrating. It provides consolidation of times tables and primes but I think the real objective here is actually to use this as a lead in to various data and averages topics. I always try to teach KS3 Statistics using data that the students have created themselves as they are far more engaged and care about what the data is telling them. This not only provides that meaningful data, but does so in a way which consolidates some fundamental number facts at the same time
I plan to use Google Sheets to collect the data which we will then analyse in a later lesson. Google Docs in general is great for this type of collaboration. I have created a template for a group.
Each group has a separate sheet that they fill in as they go. Just duplicate the sheets for as many groups as you have, making sure that each group is working on their own sheet before you start.
Talking of groups, here are my general rules for planning any group activity:
- I chose the groups. I have nothing against pupils working in friendship groups but I know who to avoid putting together and the process of self-selecting can be painful for some.
- Everyone has a role. Some pupils will see group work as a chance to sit back and some will naturally dominate. Assigning specific roles reduces this.
- Everyone contributes equally. By rotating the roles I will try as far as possible to make sure that everyone ends up doing the same activities by the end of the session.
To get some excitement going, I’ll keep a running commentary on the highest score. I also plan to write up the “Errors” that the Error Recorders give me as we go. I want to make sure we have some time at the end for reflection on how it went, i.e.
- Did you work together as a team? How did you support each other?
- What was a good strategy for a high score? (When I play it, I rarely use all 60 seconds as I am trying to go too quickly and so I am often tempted to guess ones I don’t know)
- As a team what did you do to make sure your scores were improving (Write down the errors on a big piece of paper? – I didn’t say you couldn’t!)
I would definitely leave the data analysis part until the following lesson. There is lots you can do with this and it could form the basis of a series of lessons on Averages, Data representation including Box plots. We can start with the question, “Who was the winning team?”, which in itself is open to interpretation.
mho maths 