Potter Street and Purford Green Pupils discover there’s more to maths than meets the eye

POTTER Street Academy and Purford Green Primary pupils took on a mega-maths challenge when they celebrated World Maths Day recently.

Dressed in maths-themed clothes, the children investigated how the subject relates to the world around us in unexpected and interesting ways. Whole-school activities included discovering how graphic artist M.C. Escher used shape and tessellations in his artwork, how to calculate populations of US states and compare these with UK population data, and comparing relative sizes of planets using fruit.

Later in the week, Year 4 and 5 girls from both schools visited Maths Alive and the RAF Museum in Hendon. The aim of the visit was to engage girls in maths and engineering and grow their confidence. Activities ranged from using calculations to judge the best design for an aircraft and reduce CO2 emissions, looking at how coordinates were used to plan WWII invasions, interpreting data to predict weather, and controlling space robots. As well as all that, the girls had the exciting opportunity to practise being pilots.

Primary School Lead, Emma Bloomfield said: ‘Problem-solving and reasoning were the focus for the day and children demonstrated their ability to persevere and show resilience in tackling the problems they faced. The children left school having explored the importance of maths in everyday life, aware of the transferable skills it develops and most importantly, just how much fun it can be!’