Monday 7 October 2013

Mathematical Thunk: Averages

I love whole-school teaching and learning meetings. Although maths lessons are completely different from, say, history lessons, you can pick up so many new ideas from non-maths teachers.

We are lucky at SSA to have several Teaching and Learning Consultants - one in each faculty, plus a few Advanced T&L Consultants who support all departments. These are teachers who have some of their timetable allocated to supporting other teachers.

One such Advanced T&L Consultant is Zayn Bharuchi, a psychology super-teacher. She inspired me to feature mathematical "thunks" regularly on this blog. The first thunk comes directly from her, and when I read it, I was completely blown away by how imaginative it is.

Mean, Mode and Median brothers. But they want some Hollywood glamour and a more than average surname. Thunk: What is their surname?

Isn't this brilliant? I like to think I'm a creative maths teacher, but I never would have come up with this in a million years! That's because my creativity is often limited to mathematical ideas (and jewellery).

And as an extension, another nice question:

Who is the eldest/youngest sibling? Why?

This got a nice debate going in the maths office. I am definitely going to use these questions next time I teach averages.  Thank you Zayn!

This post was written by Emma Cooke, Sidney Stringer Academy, Coventry
 
 

1 comment: