I believe that there are ample opportunities to genuinely connect Maths into the PE lessons that we teach. Maths integration is very worthwhile, in my opinion, as it provides students with genuine learning opportunities that allows them to apply what they have learned in class in another setting (Bloom's Taxonomy). At the moment, in maths in grade 3, the students are working on fractions and decimal points. They are working on developing an understanding of how big or small the numerator is compared to the denominator. For example, they would know that 5/10 is half. They would know that 8/10 is much more than half. As we are working on striking and fielding, I felt that a great connection could be made with batting averages in baseball and chose to explore this path with them. Kids often get dejected or feel as though they are not good if they strike and miss a ball. My main aim was to discuss professional batting average with them and ask the to think about the follow scenario: Imagine that I am going to snap my fingers and make the best professional baseball hitter of all time and a professional baseball pitcher appear before your very eyes. If I was to tell the pitcher to throw 10 pitches in a games to the hitter, how many out of ten do you think he would hit? The students predominantly said that the hitter would hit between 7 and 10 out of 10 pitches. I then introduced the 25 best batting averages of all time. They were shocked to see that the very best of the best, Ty Cobb, had a lifetime average of 0.366 or roughly 36%. This set the stage for them to keep track of and record their average out of ten. I do not have enough bats for everyone, so opted to use a tennis racket and a soft ball instead. They had to: A) Record how many hits out of ten in fraction form and convert it to a decimal point. B) Record how many kicks out of ten rolls of the ball from the pitcher in fraction form and convert to decimal point. C) Do a mini-reflection on their performance. Please see video and slide show below. It was a very successful class and suggest you try it out. Teacher Reflection: I did this lesson twice yesterday with two different grade 3 classes. The first class I did not have the decimal column on the worksheet. After collaborating with the grade 3 teachers, it was decided that I would add the decimal. Despite not putting the decimal column on the worksheet in the first class, it was still a great maths connection.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorKAUST Faculty, Pedagogical Coach. Presenter & Workshop Leader.IB Educator. #RunYourLife podcast host. Archives
September 2022
|