It all adds up: Maths Day at ISM Rosinka

ISM Rosinka Maths Day is an annual event which is much anticipated by everyone. This year it took place on Thursday the 4th of April and turned out to be practical, 'hands on', or some might say 'feet on.'

This year, the focus for the day was 'odd numbers', with every child and staff member having to wear odd socks, decorated to represent odd numbers such as 1,3 and 5, as opposed to different socks. We wore football socks, embroidered socks, socks with numbers on, triangles on and calculations on. Never before has ISM Rosinka seen so many odd (in both senses of the word) socks!

The day was busy but a lot of fun. We had an Upper Primary Kahoot quiz written by Andrey Grishaev, a MAT student, with extremely challenging questions, such as "354782.12 – 453699 = ?". We had a variety of outdoor games, which were all number-based, and indoor challenges, such as writing mathematical leaflets based upon the symbol pi or infinity or creating mathematical badges. We had the House Point competitions, a range of quick-fire challenges posted around the campus. We also took part in a photography competition, which was held both for staff and students, with over 35 entries and seven winners, each receiving a Rubik’s cube as a prize. 

Every child had the opportunity to participate in a carousel of maths-based activities during the day. There were four different activities for each year group. These ranged from investigating randomness in sweet packets, building tessellating walls from eggs, measuring the relationship between speed and distance by flying paper planes, drawing around our bodies, and measuring perimeters. Our students also examined capacity with different coloured water, cooking, using Jenga. It was great to see our students using maths and, especially, the often neglected measure and/or probability, used in so many different and creative ways. The idea behind our annual event is to convey to students that maths is fun and it is about real life. Maths is all around us in a variety of forms.

My favourite quote of the day was by Vova Savushkin, a Year Five pupil: ‘We didn’t do any maths today - we just played with numbers and things”.

One of the best things about Maths Day is that it provides an opportunity to put our mathematical learning into practice and to consolidate skills in a broader context. Pupils don’t associate these activities with learning or even with the number-crunching that is usually done in class. It gives them a different perspective on shape, space and measure. Maths should be real, motivational and fun. Pushing the boundaries into creative problem-solving can only serve to help these mathematicians of tomorrow to think outside of the box.

Written by Dr Tara Wilson, Rosinka Maths Subject Leader