Maths Week 2023
In the week beginning 13 March, Prep pupils undertook an impressive set of challenges at our annual Maths Week. Pupils used Mathematics in a variety of contexts, allowing them to apply and use their skills in different investigations throughout the week.
Year 4 had arguably the best Maths Week which began by calculating recipe details and upscaling a 12 person recipe to feed over 50 people. Later in the week they were able to bake the ‘Rocky Road’ using the measurements they had previously calculated, certainly a delicious, yet mathematically challenging endeavour.
Year 5 investigated the ancient Magic square inspired by the Lo Shu Square from over 3000 years ago. Pupils did solve the magic square which led them to find patterns and techniques to answer different magic squares.
Year 6 completed the ‘Mean’ Child Project, where pupils measured each other in groups and calculated the average (mean) height, hand width, head circumference etc. They then created their own ‘mean’ Year 6 children.
Year 7 completed a coding Masterclass where pupils learned how to crack codes such as the caesar shift, morse code, frequency analysis and credit codes. Pupils then had to use these skills to crack a ‘Maths Murder Mystery’.
Year 8 began the week investigating the monetary value of music streaming, calculating how much money musicians earned from 1 million music streams for different platforms, and how much of that money would go to producers. All of Year 8 were shocked to learn that musicians needed 229 Spotify streams to make $1. They then continued the monetary theme by taking part in a stock exchange game in groups where pupils needed to discuss which stocks they were going to buy or sell based on graph prediction and news events.
During Form times and registration, pupils had the opportunity to complete escape rooms, origami and use a variety of number systems such as Cistercian numerals and Alexandrian (Greek) numerals. Pre Prep even got involved with Nursery tallying ants in Forest School, and Year 3 pupils used hieroglyphics to calculate numbers in Ancient Egyptian.
Overall, this was an excellent Maths Week, yet again, where pupils got into the intricacies and fun aspects of Maths, understanding its real-life applications.
