Maths Teachers – A timely maths lesson from Maths300
Edited from an email from Charles Lovett – Maths300!
The activity for trial. A (timely) maths lesson!
Maths300 is our attempt to find the 300 most interesting lessons we can from across the country. It is 100% professional support for teachers in that we hope teachers will trial the lessons and then seriously discuss the values of the contained teaching and learning features.
One such lesson is Sporting Finals (in both AFL and NRL versions). To us it is a remarkably ‘interesting’ Working Mathematically lesson. It involves a real context (relevant right now as the finals season approaches) and a very engaging simulation of the ‘final 8’ using cards. It has great supportive software. It revolves around the social meaning of the word ‘fairness’. It works at lots of year levels and very much suits mixed abilities. The lesson notes describe many very clever pedagogical insights that make it flow easily in the classroom. A major outcome for students (apart from the maths content) is the acquisition of ‘socially useful knowledge’. “So that’s how (and why) the finals work that way!”
In any sport building a finals structure and ‘making it fair’ is a challenge. In the final 8 structure it is popularly argued how important it is to get into the top four since that gives a team a ‘double chance’. Students discover the structure is actually very unfair on one team in particular and it is not a double chance at all – it is much worse for the lower teams!
We invite you to trial the lesson. To access it go to the maths300 website (www.maths300.com) and choose Free Tour, then take the Sample lessons link. From here you can:
- i) find the lesson notes
- ii) download the supportive software
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