Experiences

Walk – calculations related to scale

Aleksandra Pilc

Poland

Primary school

Maths

Teaching in class, Extracurricular activity

Direct

One of the issues that makes students the most trouble is the scale and particularly calculations related to the scale. At first lesson, I explained the situations in which we come across scale, we solved the tasks in the manual and after the classes I found out that students remembered little. In the next lesson I brought them maps of Lodz in scale 1:20,000, and I divided into the groups of three. Their first task was to find our school on the map. Then each team was to select one of the streets (each group chosen different), which is located in the neighbourhood of the school. They were to choose the shortest streets. Another task to perform was to measure the length of the selected street on the map and use the skills gained in the previous lesson, we calculate the length of it in reality (here I had to help some of them). Then we went for a walk (to take care of the students asked a few more teachers). Each of the teams accompanied by teacher received a pedometer and their task was to go along the selected street from beginning to end with pedometer that not only counted the number of steps that were made by students, but also measured the length of the route which was walked in kilometers. After a stroll we all met up in the classroom and compared the measurements that we made in the field with those previously calculated. The results were similar. I asked students whether now understand what purpose the scale is placed on the map and if they can give me examples of its use? They had a lot of ideas, answers: to know how to calculate how many kilometers from the map I have to drive, to know how much gasoline my dad has to fuel. Example two: to know how to calculate the route during the trip, to know how many kilometers I have to go to get home before it gets dark. Students like the lessons outside the class very much.