PJP Maths Week Newsletter

Well done to all the staff and students on a very successful maths week in PJP. We ran maths week from the 14th of October to the 18th October. We adopted a no books policy and learned maths in lots of fun and innovative ways. We hope you enjoy reading about the great week here!

The Maths curriculum for primary school is in the process of changing. The new maths curriculum is part of a new overall curriculum for all primary and special schools. The new curriculum offers an engaging, playful and inclusive learning experience for children, focusing on both the "how" and "what" of mathematical learning. The aim of the new maths curriculum is that children see mathematics as important and useful to their everyday lives. Our teachers received training for this new curriculum in the last academic year and will receive further training this year.

Last week was Maths Week. We really enjoyed it. We did lots of active learning during the week. These are some of the stuff we did. Firstly, we went outside to make lines and angles with our bodies. We didn’t use the maths book at all during maths week. Then the next day we made lines and angles in art. We realised that angles are everywhere. We also made lines and angles in the corridor and other classes came down and measured them. On Wednesday, we used protractors for maths and found lots of angles in the classroom. We played games with the angles in the classroom. On Friday, we constructed angles and reflex angles. That’s what we did for Maths Week.

By Sam Kennedy and Rory Kidd

When we heard our class got the job of organising the maths games for Maths Week we were so excited. We spent all week preparing. On Thursday, we set up straight away, before the first 4th class came in. We had eleven maths stalls and the 4th class rotated in groups. For the 4th class, we had everything from subtraction to fractions and multiplication games. We made sure to include P.E equipment and also had card games, board games and target boards. The 4th class seemed to really enjoy it. It was a great way to have fun and learn.

The next day was the 2nd class’s turn. We had to change the games a little bit for the 2nd class to their level. For some of the games we really wanted to focus on what they were learning for Maths Week and they were learning greater than and less than. We changed the games to challenge them. For their first time learning it they were really good.

I think we were all shocked and delighted by how smoothly it went as it was our first time doing something like this. I think this was a great maths week idea and all the classes really enjoyed it. Our class enjoyed it the most. It was so fun and a good experience for us to help out during maths week. I think it should become an annual Maths Week tradition as it was a great way for the junior classes to learn.

Isobel Harvey

On Monday our teacher told us that we were going on a maths trip. It was called 'Bubbly Maths.' We got there by a bus. Everybody was singing. When we got there, we got put into rows while we waited for other schools to come. The show was very funny and everybody enjoyed it, we would like to come again. There were two other schools called Edenmore N.S and St. Malachys N.S. I liked that you could be put in bubbles, and our teacher Mr. Murphy became the best bubble master of Ireland. The show was about maths and bubbles, and we got to learn bubble language. We learned how long a metre and we measured the with balloons. We also learned what a tetrahedron is. The show lasted for an hour long, but we got an extra ten minutes. The part was to see how many people could fit in a balloon cube and the answer was 20! We also did a maths week trail for maths week on Thursday. We counted cars and measured the basketball court by linking arms and spreading as wide as we could. There were blue, red, black, navy, white and silver cars. We also tried counting all the communion photos in the third class corridor. There was over 100. That was the end of Maths Week and we really enjoyed it!

By Emma Kiernan and Taylor Ridgeway in Mr. Murphy's 3rd class

We learned about different types of graphs. We were in groups and we did surveys. We went to 4th and 5th class on Wednesday and to 3rd class on Friday. The surveys we did were our favourite pizza topping and favourite time of year. It was Christmas in every class.

By Séamus Crosse,