CROSS CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES WITH OTHER SUBJECTS



Eva de Prado shares:

Cross-Curricular Math, English, Science Lesson 

Lesson Focus and Instructional Purpose Students: analyze the melting of the polar ice caps and its effects on the Earth and humanity 

Unifying Essential Question(s) 

How fast are the polar ice caps melting, and why is this rate important to human life on Earth? 

Click here to see the lesson




Eva de Prado shares:

Pythagoras – Father of Harmonics

Pythagoras discovered the musical intervals. He also lectured people in the healing powers of sound and harmonic frequencies. Pythagoras not only applied the principles of harmonics to music, art, and architecture but also to more social arenas like raising a family, friendship and personal development. 

From these genius pythagoreans with their mathematical formula came the basis of our music of today.

This activity will be carried on between Music department and Math department.

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Marta Sánchez shares this activity

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Activity for 4th ESO: The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Night-
Time 





Art class:  Students could be asked to draw a comic or  to redesign the book cover for a new release of the novel. Or to design the poster advertising a stage play or movie based on the book.
English class: They could be asked to write a brief summary, to make a list of the characters, to describe the main character. Plot: summary test, Full Book Quiz, 
Maths class: Mathematics is the most prevalent motif in the book, as it's the means by which Christopher best understands the world around him.

  Students could be asked to identify where Math arises in the book and do some activities:
   Prime numbers, The Monty Hall ProblemChaos theory, Pythagorean theorem, a  Game       called Conway's Soldiers, Tessellation and more...
  

Compartido por Francisca Arpa:


One of the most effective ways to shape knowledge and cognitive skills is conducting manipulative activities or projects to engage students in the hands-on learning of History.

Option 1: Hands-on Maths

SIMILAR TRIANGLES : EXPLORING SIMILARITY WITH SHADOWS AND MIRRORS

The aim of this Project is  to identify similar triangles, corresponding sides and angles and to apply Thales’s theorem to calcule measurements of distances to inaccesible points .

Thales of Miletus wondered about the height of the  Great Pyramid in  Egypt. Thales notices that the sun’s  shadows  fell from every object in the desert at the same angle, creating similar triangles from every object. Thales’s research allowed him to use similar triangles to measure the height of the pyramids of Egypt and the distance to a ship at sea




MEASUREMENTS OF DISTANCES TO INACCESSIBLE POINTS

1.- Calculation of the height of the cypress in the schoolyard

We just need measuring tape, paper, pen and a sunny day

The students will be divided into groups of four, one of them will be the benchmark for the measurement, the other two will measure the height of the student and the respective measurements of the shadows of the tree and the student, the fourth member of the group will write down measures.

Then using Thales they will calculate the height of the cypress





The groups will present the measurement obtained and check if they have reached a similar result

2.- Working with a mirror


A mirror placed on the floor can also be used to determinate measures indirectly. When teh mirror is placed at a particular distance from the wall, the distance that and observer stands from the mirror determines the reflection that the observer sees in the mirror.




In groups of four students, they will perform the following steps
*     Find a spot on the floor 8 m away from one of the walls of your classroom.
*     Place a mirror on the floor, 2m from that wall
*     Each gropu member should take a turn standing on the spot 10m from the wall and look into the mirror. Other group member should help the observer  locate the point on the Wall that the observer sees in the mirror and the measure the height of this point above the floor.
*     Before moving the mirror, each group member should take a turn as the observer.
*     Repeat the same process by moving the mirror to locations that are 3 m and 4m away from the Wall

I.-The students can use this table to record results:

Distance from the Wall to the mirror (in m)
Height of the Point on the Wall reflected in the mirror ( in m)

Person A
Person B
Person C
Person D
2




3




4





b) Measure the eye-level height for each member of the group and record it in the table :

eye-level height for each group member
Person A
Person B
Person C
Person D







c) - Consider the data collected when the mirror was 2m from the wall
     On the diagram below, label the height of each  group member and the height of the point on th e wall determined by the group member




d)- For each person in the group, determine the ratio of the height of the point on the wall to the eye-level height of the observer

Ratio  of height of the point on the wall  tp eye-level of observer

Person A
Person B
Person C
Person D
Ratio as a fraction






Ratio as a decimal







e).- Repeat when the mirror was 3 from the wall and  when the mirror was 4m from the wall
 f).- Express regularity in repeated reasoning. What appears to be true about the ratios you found?

     Finally you can propose to the whole class that they discuss how they would use the mirror method to calculate the height of their classroom






Shared by Francisca Arpa

This project is intended to be carried out jointly with the teacher of the bilingual section of physical education.

 

Olympic Measures

This problem invites students to engage with units of measurement and orders of magnitude, by presenting a variety of records and measurements from events at the Olympic Games. 

Some will be familiar to students, others may lend themselves to estimation or a little research.  Hand out this set of cards and invite students to work in pairs together:

Below are some interesting measurements and records from events at the Olympic Games. Unfortunately they have been muddled up. Can you cut out the cards and regroup them correctly?


If students are stuck, here are some key questions to help them:

Which quantities are likely to be whole numbers? Why?

Which quantities are lengths? Which are times? Which are speeds? Which are masses?

Which units might belong with the lengths... times... speeds... masses...?

Can you rank the different lengths... times... speeds... masses in order of magnitude?


Finish by bringing the whole class together to agree on a class ordering for the cards. Students will need to convince each other of their own ordering by explaining what they are certain of, and justifying their educated guesses.

The videos of impressive world record performances available on  https://listverse.com/2007/10/02/top-10-impressive-athletics-world-records/ might be of interest to students.


Invite students to do some research to create a set of similar cards of their own to swap with a friend.

To carry out this joint project, the following steps will be followed:
             - In physical education class a session will be dedicated to talk about the different Olympic sports and it will be proposed that in groups of four they make a power point about three Olympic sports, indicating the records achieved, they will have a period of 15 days to do it.
             - Once this activity is carried out in PE, the activity designed with the cards will be carried out in math class, it will be carried out in two or three sessions.
          - After completing the activity of the math class. In PE class students will watch the videos of impressive world record performances available on: 


I hope that you find interesting this article about cross curricular topics related to Maths. The sentences I have coloured red should be engraved in every Bilingual Section Project and uttered before any new teacher coming to the school. 
In my opinion. Am I crossing the line here?
Mariví de la Rocha

Bringing maths to life with cross-curricular appeal
Mathematics and the Battle of Trafalgar may not have an obvious link but Peter Ransom explains how to use themes to enlighten your class

The idea that mathematics should be taught as short topics in isolation is against my philosophy, as pupils should be aware of how the branches of mathematics interconnect with each other and the whole school curriculum.  More teachers are now seeing the virtues of cross-curricular lessons and there are so many historical events and technological and scientific breakthroughs that can be linked to mathematics, which gives more context and relevance to the subject.
I first stumbled across the concept of introducing other subjects into mathematics when I was organising the annual Mathematical Association (MA) conference in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1991. We put on an exhibition about the mathematical tradition in the north of England, which included a display of work by William Emerson, the 18th century mathematician who wrote about the mathematics of sundials.
I soon realised this was an incredibly rich topic to incorporate into the classroom; getting pupils to construct a sundial to help them grasp how geometry was used during a particular period in history. As well as highlighting ancient uses of mathematics, teaching about sundials opened up an opportunity to discuss geographical concepts such as longitude and latitude, as well as scientific lessons on the rotation of the Earth.
These themed lessons were uncommon a couple of decades ago and very few teachers I worked with chose to adopt this cross-curricular approach. Outside school however, among my peers at the MA and the British Society for the History of Mathematics, these ideas were gaining momentum and I picked up plenty of lesson ideas that I could implement in my secondary school classes.
It has always been important for me to make my classes lively and relevant – I drew on subjects that interested me and that I could present in an enthusiastic and knowledgeable way. When training PGCE mathematics teachers, I advise them to explore their interests and the exciting applications that these subjects may have in the classroom.
As long as teachers are explaining the fundamental of mathematics, I see cross-curricular lessons as an enrichment of mathematics. It is also worth taking a more unorthodox approach to lessons in order to engage pupils who have had no previous interest in mathematics.
In terms of the subjects that crossover well with mathematics, the sciences are a clear example. The STEM initiative, which works to promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics, is now playing a big role in education and it is important that pupils understand how these subjects link together.
Drawing on the engineering theme, I have taught lessons about the mathematics that the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel applied when designing the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol. I showed pupils copies of his calculations book which included Pythagoras theorem examples, simultaneous equations used to calculate distances and even examples of corrections Brunel had made. These illustrations motivated students to work with equations and calculate the area using the dimensions provided. To capture the pupils' imagination further, I would present to the class in period costume, dressed up as Brunel, which of course drew funny looks from teachers and pupils at first.
There will always be pupils who remain interested in mathematics regardless of the style of lesson but cross-curricular lessons come into their own when sparking interest from children who have struggled. Not every lesson will hit the mark, so collecting feedback from my pupils was a valuable exercise. I would ask them to submit feedback forms explaining which lessons they enjoyed, if the homework was too hard or too easy and any improvements I needed to make.
Inspirations for cross-curricular lessons can come from anywhere, for example landmark anniversaries. A few years ago, on the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, I set my pupils the task of writing a battle report for King George III in 1805 using the actual mathematical data that was available. The pupils used statistics to compare sets of data such as the fleet size of Britain, France and Spain, the number of men on each ship and the comparable firepower on board. Analysing the data, the children wrote up their reports as an imaginary adviser to the king explaining the chances of success.
Examples like this bring mathematics to life and while it is ideal to combine other topics covered in the syllabus, it isn't essential. It is more important that the practical examples show pupils how to apply certain mathematical practices rather than just memorising them. I found that this shortened the actual time I needed to spend with them on textbook examples and also helped improve their general knowledge and cultural reference.
My advice to teachers is to remain focused on your professional development. Creating innovative lessons with relevant demonstrations will give you a better chance of keeping the class motivated and raising their aspirations.
Peter Ransom works as an education consultant and part-time lecturer at Bath Spa University and is the president designate of The Mathematical Association. He has 30 years of teaching experience and will be speaking on cross-curricular mathematics at the MA annual conference in April 2013.



Shared by Arancha Acebes:

Here you have a couple of examples of activities that can be developed collaborating with your colleagues from other subjects.

MATHS AND TECHNOLOGY

Students can build a wooden tangram in the workshop and afterwards they´ll use it in their math lessons as a manipulative material to study fractions and geometry.  2020_03_Tangram.mp4

MATHS AND ARTS 

Once students learn how to draw regular 2D-shapes, we can show them this webpage: http://www.datapointed.net/visualizations/math/factorization/animated-diagrams/

They can see how to factorize numbers in a visual way. Then they have to draw one of these factorizations.

                     


You can watch the animation if you visit Valladolid Science Museum. There is a room dedicated to Maths as part of its permanent exhibition.

I really recommend you visit it.

http://www.museocienciavalladolid.es/sala-malditas-matematicas-o-no/


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Pythagoras – Father of Harmonics

Eva de Prado shares: Pythagoras – Father of Harmonics Pythagoras discovered the musical intervals. He also lectured people in the ...