YR 7 MATHS ENTERPRISE DAY - BUILD A HOUSE - 20th June 2011

Nichola Morrish from the BEP introduced herself and the volunteers from the Bank of New York and DWF Solicitors.  She explained what the project was about and what the students would be doing in each of the 5 workshops.  They would have 30 minutes to complete each workshop, and these were:.          

 ‘Decorating a Bedroom’ – This involved picking items of furniture out of a catalogue and writing down the price and size of each item.  They each had £500 to spend on completing the room and they had to stay within their budget.  They then had to do a scale drawing of their room on a sheet of A3 paper and decide where each item of furniture was going to be..          

‘Tesselation’ – Kitchen and bathroom tiling.  Students had to design their own shapes on squared paper, cut them out and join them together without any gaps ..          

‘Painting the House’ – Students had to calculate how much paint they would need for a house using Area and Perimeter.  .          

‘Best Value’ – Electricity Providers.  Compare and contrast data to analyse which electricity company would best suit 4 different families..          

‘Trunkated Tetrohedran’ – Folding sheets of A4 paper to make a dodecahedron and then sticking them together to make a colourful ‘lampshade’ type shape.

These workshops helped the students to realise the importance of maths in a normal day-to-day life, with things that would normally be taken for granted. This was an excellent Applied Learning activity giving the students a chance to learn about ‘running a house’ and learning maths in an easy and fun way.