Experiences

=Experiences=

Use this page to write about your experiences with activities related to or inspired by the show. Longer responses can be uploaded as documents. Remember to use the discussion tab to comment on other peoples entries.

'The Joy of Maths' Evening at the International School of Toulouse (IST) 12/11/09
We, the Maths Department at IST, held this evening a part of our campaign to inform and involve parents more in their children's maths education. We opened the evening with drinks and an exhibition based on the 'Rice Show'. See the slideshows below to get a flavour for the event. (you can set both slideshows going at once)

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The Exhibit was based around 2 central ideas

1. As with Stan's cafe //**1 grain of rice represents 1 person**//. Students in years 6, 7 and 8 carried out their own experiments to arrive at a useable figure for 'the weight of rice'. We then all agreed to use the same equivalence so that the exhibits were directly comparable. It is in this activity that much of the richness lies. We gave the question open ended and let students figure out a figure for themsleves and then debate the differences they had. We then had to arrrive at a reasonable method and so on. We have produced an activity template for this and posted it on our website @http://www.thinkmathematics.com/num/Estimating_The_Rice_Show/Actem.htm as with the show in Swansea, the biggest pile of rice in the room was 'Number of Millionaires in France and England combined'

2. Partly because we were limited by the amount of rice we could justify buying and partly because we were looking for some more maths, we explored the idea of //**1mm cubed representing 1 person**// and then building 3D shapes with that volume. Below are some examples of activities we did.

With a GCSE class we asked them to make the calculations and then make regular tetrahedra to represent the populations of all of the countries represented at out school. Since we have students from China and India at our school we had some pretty big shapes, which students made out of fencing sticks. (see the photos) The challenge of working out the edge length that would give the appropriate volume is fantastically rich and relied on students applying Pythagoras and Trigonometry to solve problems. The context added a real energy to the task and as with the rice, the juxtaposition as all 18 tetrahedra were placed in ascending order was brilliant.

In a year 9 class we made right triangular prisms with the same length so that they could easily be compared. We used statistics about children. Those with no access to schools, those living under the poverty line and placed them in sequence near the rice exhibits about the children at our school. In this case I used partly done calculations with isosceles triangles so taht students were using Pythagoras theorem to calculate the hypotenuse of the cross section so that they could make the nets. I think the activity can be presented in many different ways to make it appropriately accessible.

In another year 9 and year 10 class, more prsims were made with a variety of different cross esctions and without keeping the length constant. This created a lot of conversation about visual representations and how they could be both misleading and revealing. Also when people were comparing the exhibits they needed to discuss the different nature of the shapes as part of the comparison.

See activity @http://www.thinkmathematics.com/geo/Joymaths_deadU40_rich_literacy_healthcare/Visualisingbignumbers.htm

In short, this whole exercise was fantastic from start to finish. We set up the exhibition in the reception of the school and some of the corridor space. We left it there for a week during which time it got attention from staff, students, parents and management! We were nervous about leaving piles of rice hanging around, but the students were very good and the wind was the only thing to cause any damage. The mathematical activity was fabulous and the high profile event was excellent! As always it took more time that we calculated, but it was worth it. We have kept the rice and will do it again!

Thanks to Stan's cafe, ATM and NCETM for the inspiration

Jim Noble, Curriculum Leader for Secondary Mathematics, International School of Toulouse