Maths and design innovation at Northbridge is founded on technical skills and imagination

On a very hot Friday afternoon of 29th March, the Northbridge International School Cambodia Grade 6 students braved the heat for two hours to showcase their final Game of Chance solutions at a Carnival theme event in the Secondary walkway. 

Their entertaining event was open to all students from Grade 2 and up, in order for Grade 6 to gather as much user data as possible through surveying the participants. The aim of the Interdisciplinary Maths and Design task was to achieve a fair solution that did not favour the ‘house’ or the player.

The combined knowledge of Maths and Design pushed students to delve more deeply into their probability theories and complete authentic ‘play’ tests on their final solutions in the lab to see if the Maths equations matched the real life solution.  A general finding was that any technical glitches or imbalances created an unfair game and we had an interesting discussion about man-made errors in automated processes.

Students relished the challenge of trying to achieve the best aesthetics and the fairest and most challenging game design as the top prize was Japanese Mochi ice creams for two teams from each grade class of 6A and 6B. They voted for this as their prize.

Collaborating with set groups pushed some students out of their comfort zones and a lot of reflection and learning took place in regards to individual key strengths and areas for improvements in their approaches to learning and learner profiles. Communication skills were key as was being principled. 

It was a proud moment to see how much effort the classes put in to organising prizes for their carnival participants and the pride they took in engaging with the school community with a project they had great autonomy in.  Independent learning was highly evident in this collaborative unit and well disguised as students had so much fun while working together.