Big pluses all round for dino-themed maths outreach workshops
By: Communications
On 15 and 16 November, UEA’s Maths Outreach team and four maths undergraduates combined efforts with the Sir Isaac Newton Maths Outreach team to take part in two days of dino-themed maths activities for year-four pupils. Primary schools from across Norfolk, including those in the Inspiration Trust, attended the event to experience maths in a whole new environment.
The event, held at the Inspiration Trust Teaching School Hub on Hall Road, was part of Maths Week England 2023 which aims to inspire the next generation of mathematicians and to provide opportunities for children to gain confidence in their maths skills and abilities.
Chris Jennings, Principal at Sir Isaac Newton Sixth Form (SIN), explained the importance of the event, saying:
"We live in a county where only 28% of the jobs available require a level 4 qualification and yet both the Norfolk, Suffolk and Norwich economic strategies require a much larger proportion of the workforce to be skilled up in maths and science to this level. Reaching these students early and enthusing them in our subjects is critical. Our outreach programme quite rightly has quite very ambitious goals to change the face of maths and science in the eyes of students around the county."
Across two days, 21 schools attended the sessions, with more than 180 pupils involved in total. Four UEA maths students, alongside volunteers from SIN, delivered a session on Dinosaur Park planning, which fed into the aims of cementing key knowledge such as coordinates, types of numbers and estimation.
Hanna Martell and Chaya Punnasri, two of the undergraduate students from the School of Mathematics that helped to deliver the session, also helped to create materials for the workshop. Hannah said:
"It was so lovely to witness the engagement and enthusiasm many of the students had with this activity and the whole day in general. I feel this event really positively impacted their mathematical motivation by showing them how mathematics can be applied to all sorts of scenarios - some of which are even fun!"
George Witty, Lecturer in Mathematics and Widening Participation Academic Lead who worked alongside Shay Jordan, Outreach Project Officer, and Tom Marjoram from the Inspiration Trust to deliver the event, said:
“The workshop that had been designed by our undergraduate students did a great job of engaging the pupils at this event. There were some difficult new maths concepts introduced that pupils typically wouldn’t explore until much later than year 4, but our students used clear explanation and great rapport with the pupils to help them understand. The pupils were up for solving all of the problems and had some great ideas!”
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