Keeping a scrapbook
The purpose of this resource is to provide suggestions to whānau about how they can support mathematics learning through research about favourite sports players.
About this resource
This section provides some ideas for how you can raise awareness and share mathematics using everyday experiences and resources found around your home. It includes ideas for supporting your children’s learning in all areas of mathematics: geometry, measurement, statistics, algebra, and number.
This page provides suggestions as to how mathematics can be practiced by doing research about their favourite sports players.
Keeping a scrapbook
Many children like to follow a team or a player, and they will collect clippings and photos and print off information from the internet about their sports heroes. It is a worthwhile thing to encourage this, as it can support both their literacy and mathematics learning.
Large scrapbooks, newspapers, and glue sticks are reasonably priced and are the only things you need to start a sport maths book.
Encourage your child to find and clip out tables, graphs, and charts about standings, results, and other information. Ask them to explain what the numbers mean and what they can figure out from the graphs.
Children can research their favourite players’ stats, such as birthdates, ages, weights, heights, personal bests, or season results. Encourage them to compare players and teams mathematically.
- Who is older? By how much? If he started playing when he was 19 how long has he been playing?
- What does this mean: 78% success as goal shoot?
- How many points will they need to get to the top of the table?
- If the world record is 23.5 m, how much further does she need to throw to beat that record?
- What can you tell about this cricketer from the wagon wheel graph?
- Look at the weightlifters' results. What is the difference between the first and last place?
When New Zealand competes in an international event such as the Olympics or a World Cup, there are usually lots of interesting tables and special pages produced in newspapers with medal standings and other statistics. Ask your child to do some of their calculations and estimations, or predictions, in their scrapbook, and then the scrapbook can also become a souvenir of an event or a season.
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