Tuesday, 10 July 2012

The Angles Roller Coaster

We believe that to give learning purpose and ignite interest it's important to link learning to real life situations. We have demonstrated this in some of our previous blog posts.

For this post we are looking at a real life situation for measuring and drawing angles in maths. We decided upon roller coasters as a good subject to base our lesson on. Roller coasters, after all, are all about angles!

Firstly, reading the angle of rises and falls on roller coasters involved looking at pictures of roller coasters. Then, drawing on lines to show the angle to be measured and then measuring this angle. We discussed what angles made the best roller coasters and why different angles were used. Below is an example of this:

Next, came drawing angles. Using the knowledge gathered from the 'reading angles' lesson the children had a go at drawing their own roller coasters. They then peer assessed which roller coasters they liked the look of, which they did not and why:

 
Give it a go. See what stomach churning rides your class can come up with...

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