Jaguar Maths Challenge with Barton Moss Primary School - 12th November 2010
Barton Moss Primary School brought 19 of their year 5 pupils to SCA for a Jaguar Maths Challenge set up by our maths teacher, Amanda Jenkinson. Mrs Rothwell, a representative from Jaguar who specialises in Mathematics Primary Transition activities, started off by explaining exactly what the day will involve, and this was to work out and programme a racing car for a big race. They were all given a scaled drawing of the Monaco Race Track and asked to measure the straights, bends and special features of the track. They had to do this in order to programme their car in preparation for the final race. All the pupils were split into teams of 2 or 3 and they worked together to calculate the correct speed for their car and how much fuel they will need and look up the weather conditions for the day of the race, so they could decide which tyres they needed.
The pupils used lots of different calculations to get their results, e.g. percentages, degrees, lengths, conversions, divisions, times table, subtractions and adding.
When they had all their results recorded, they could have practice laps of the circuit and decide if they needed to change anything on their programming for the big race.
When it was time for the big race, all the pupils were very excited to see who would win and who had made all the right calculations. All the pupils were cheering for their car to win and during the race one team had engine failure and another crashed half way through the race.
The winning team were Lightening, which had just 2 members. This team will be getting Trafford Centre vouchers as a prize for their excellent work.
Overall this was a very good activity to show pupils how important mathematics is in the outside world, even in exciting careers such as part of the team on a racing track. They worked together in groups solving problems and working out various calculations, whilst enjoying what they were doing and hoping their team were going to win the race.