Who says Maths is only in the classroom??

This was one of my most enjoyable and rewarding lessons late last year, mainly because it was totally unplanned, and was able to achieve a host of outcomes.

My little friend here, let's call him Sam (obviously not his real name!) had a fairly ordinary start to the day, and had particular separation issues for a host of reasons that we do not need to worry about here.

Anyway, after spending a fair bit of time moping in my office, he gradually started to grunt, then speak, then make eye contact with me.

All the while I was searching for a hook to get his mind off the start to the day that he had, and for some reason we just started talking about why people like to set world records.

How this topic eventuated, don't ask me, but soon we were laughing and talking about things like

"What's the record for eating hot dogs?"

"How many raw onions can a person eat?"

"What's the greatest number of finger clicks in one minute?" etc.

You get my drift.

We then got a bit more serious and started talking about sporting records, and jumped on my computer to see different things like the high jump, weight lifting, 100m sprint and so on.

When we saw that the High Jump record was 2.45m, I could see Sam looking at the wall intently.

I asked what he was thinking, and he replied "I'm trying to see how high that really is"

What a great point of learning!

"Hey Sam, why don't we go and find out?"

I asked what we would need. ""A ladder Mr K, a tape measure and a pencil"

So, after wandering the school to find a ladder ( I keep a tape measure in my desk always) we found a place to do our measuring.

Sam measured out 2.45m (and learning what the .45 represented was a fantastic learning moment in itself) and then I had to get up the ladder to show how high it was.

The photo speaks for itself.

We were both amazed at how high the Cuban athlete jumped, and went and checked again as we just couldn't believe that someone could jump that high.

We covered so many aspects of maths in this one activity, and it all came from searching for that 'hook' to get Sam engaged in an activity that would serve a variety of purposes.

Needless to say, he happily went off to class, armed with some new knowledge that was learnt in a meaningful and relevant manner. What we did, and how we did it stayed with Sam, as he was then able to use similar investigative approaches to explore other records and gain a better understanding of different measurement units along the way.

There was no bookwork, no listening to a teacher standing out the front. The investigation was driven by, and owned by Sam and was just a fantastic experience to be a part of.