Maths Week 2023 - Maths in Motion Highlights

Maths in Motion Highlights Header

Thank you to everyone who has been sharing on Twitter what you got up to in this year's extended Maths Week Scotland. In particular, we have really enjoyed seeing the different ways everyone was inspired by this year's theme of 'Maths in Motion'. It was difficult to choose any favourites, but we've picked out a few of our highlights.

Sport & P.E.

Unsurprisingly, sports featured heavily in everyone's Maths in Motion activities, with many schools choosing to incorporate it in to their P.E. lessons, for example through measuring or timing their P.E. activities. We also loved seeing schools getting creative in their P.E. lessons, such as the pupils from St Margaret's Primary who used their bodies to create shapes.

We also had a lot of schools tweeting about penalty predictors, which was one of the recurring activities in this year's Maths in Motion video series produced by the Scottish Mathematical Council in collaboration with the Scottish Football Association.

Our most tweeted about event was the 'Multiple Heartbeats' workshop run by Maths on Toast, which looked at the link between maths and exercise. Pupils learned about their pulse, and how to measure and record data about their heartbeats before and after different kinds of exercise.

Dance

Closely related to P.E. and Sports, and coming a close second in most mentioned activities, was dance. We loved seeing all the different schools getting their groove on, from learning how beat and movement are used in music and dance, to creating dance moves for numbers and functions or having a school wide danceathon.

Construction

Engineering and mechanics are full of maths and moving parts, so it came as no surprise to see lots of schools getting busy with construction projects. There were lots of paper planes flying around (which again was an activity in this year's Scottish Mathematical Council Maths in Motion video series) and some paper rockets too, as well as projects designing, building and testing everything from marble runs and racing tracks, to car ramps and skate parks.

Stop Motion

There's lots of maths to think about when creating stop motion videos, such as angles, rations and scales. We really enjoyed seeing the stop motion videos that schools created and shared with us.

Outdoor Learning

Maths outside is always a big winner during Maths Week Scotland! Just by moving around outdoors you are already setting your maths in motion, with some schools taking their PE lessons outside too. Other schools organised number or shapes hunts outside, or used map work and orienteering to practice positional and directional language. We were also delighted to spot our 30 Days Wild maths resources being used.

Languages

We love it when schools incorporate Maths Week Scotland across the curriculum. This year we saw quite a few schools combining maths and language classes, including German, French, Spanish and Italian.

Bowling Multiplication

In the week preceding Maths Week Scotland, one teacher shared a fun idea for learning multiplication in a playful way through bowling. This proved to be popular and we saw quite a few schools pick up this idea during Maths Week itself, so thought we would include the original post here:

Maths in Motion Posters

This school created posters to show maths in motion in different ways. We also held a Maths in Motion poster competition earlier in the year, with all the amazing winners featuring in this year's Maths Week Scotland countdown.

And finally...

We finish off our Maths in Motion highlights with another look at maths in sports, and a huge thank you to Dundee FC for being such good sports and supporting Maths Week Scotland!

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