The Mathematics Department have had a busy but fun week fundraising for NSPCC by supporting their Number Day initiative. The NSPCC is an important UK charity that runs Childline and aims to improve the lives of children through education and campaigning for law changes. If you’d like to find out more about their work visit www.nspcc.org.uk

Throughout the week we ran events at lunchtime. Mr Lopes had great fun playing board games such as chess, top trumps and dominoes, developing students’ logical thinking and strategic planning. Ms Vitamore worked with budding computer scientists, breaking codes and discussing the application of mathematics to banking security. Mr De Khems ran a sporting competition, revealing to students the connection of maths to sports. Ms Joseph held a countdown tournament, helping students to improve their mental arithmetic skills. Ms Palmer and Mr Kimani organised a small maths fair with lots of prizes to win by participating in probability games, estimating and puzzle solving. There was also a number hunt on Friday that exposed students to different types of numbers including irrational, perfect and imaginary numbers. Overall, it was an excellent week, creating a great buzz amongst the students and allowing everybody to see the joy in Maths.

As well as seeing Maths from a different perspective, we also took the time to discuss more serious issues during specially planned lessons. All students in years 7-9 had the opportunity to explore how to stay safe online using NSPCCs Online Safety Quiz and this opened up a safe space for students to express their own concerns. We also looked at different types of inequality around the world with the support of resources from the Young Lives project in conjunction with Oxfam. The students were able to use the Palma ratio to compare wealth inequality within countries. For more information about their research visit www.younglives.org.uk/

Thank you to all students who took part and all parents who supported with donations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why is Maths important?

1. Learning Maths is good for your brain.  

2. Maths helps you to tell the time.  

3. Math helps you with your finances.  

4. Maths makes you a better cook (or baker).  

5. Maths helps us to have better problem-solving skills.  

6. Maths is used in practically every career in some way. 

7. Maths is all around us and helps us to understand the world better.