SSC Gifted & Talented

I was chatting yesterday with Year 1 & 2 pupils about how we should all see ourselves as both teachers and learners. Often pupils are brilliant teachers - that is why listening to each other’s ideas is so important. Here is a good case in point - a Year 3/4 pupil explaining how he worked out the circumference of a circle he was exploring.

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Congratulations to the Year 1&2 students who graduated today from the G&T programme for maths. It was great to see so many parents at the presentation as well. Some relatives and pupils back in school managed to catch the presentation via the live stream on SSC TV.

Today you are going to use your maths knowledge to ask questions and set challenges around Silverstone. We create our tour using a quikmap. Remember - we are all teachers and learners! Here’s a quick quikmap …

The Year Three and Four G&T Maths students from the Sponne Cluster Primary Schools were presented with their medals and prizes today. A great bunch, they were full of energy and enthusiasm throughout the course and were hungry to learn new concepts. They also worked hard at using and applying their existing mathematical knowledge at Silverstone. Congratulations!

Image Credit: mathsisfun.com

We explored perimeter and circumference after identifying some areas to measure on Google Earth. The path measurement feature of Google Earth proved an interesting way to check our findings.

The circumference of a circle is simple to find using pi as long as you know the diameter. However, when we measured outside the centre spot was not nicely marked and we had to find the diameter by measuring across until we had the greatest distance. Anything less was simply a chord! Choosing the right measuring equipment was vital as was having a rough idea of what the answer might be. We had intended to measure the helicopter landing spot next to the Medical Centre but it had a helicopter on it! We made do with a roundabout on closed section of road.

The circumference of the roundabout was about 9.67m.

We also measured the perimeter of a whopping rectangle in the car park. We had to recheck our measurements  because groups had such a difference in findings. After a bit more concentration and a long walk, we agreed on our results.

The Year Five and Six G&T Maths students from the Sponne Cluster Primary Schools were presented with their medals and prizes today. They fully deserved the awards after demonstrating not only great maths ability but also effective communication and collaboration skills. Congratulations!

Let’s pull the trigger!

Image credit: coolmath.com

3pm Update:

We had a brilliant and very wet time today. Exploring the tangent function to find the height of buildings around the track, we quickly got to grips with our clinometers to measure the necessary angle. We also made sure that we measured the adjacent distance from the structure to be measured to our feet, as well as noting the height from the floor to our eyes.

We practiced our techniques and calculations around the study centre, making use of trigonometry tables to find the tangent of our measured angles. Some students presented their findings to the to rest of the group to make sure we were all secure in the process. We also realised the importance of having a sensible estimate of a height to act as a check on our outcomes.

We then put our newly acquired skills into practice around the circuit, gathering the necessary information to complete the height calculations over a working lunch back at the Study Centre. It absolutely poured and we were all soaked but despite the inclement conditions, we completed our measurements and had a browse around the paddock at the beautiful classic cars, before returning to finalise the height calculations back at base.

We were generally in rough agreement about the height of the  building/structures that we measured and we agreed that most discrepancies were probably due to the use of trundle wheels to measure the adjacent distances. They gave a margin of error because they weren’t exact enough to the nearest centimeter.

Hold on to your measuring tapes - we are going to measure stuff today!