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Math Adventure at Air Force Museum
How many children can you fit into a banana? How big is a crashed aeroplane? Four student teachers have developed math lessons for the Air Force Museum.
“We quite surprised ourselves with how quickly the idea about math problems came to us. We were just walking around the museum,” says Anna-Karin Arvidsson, soon-to-be upper secondary mathematics teacher (at left in picture).
This will be great experience later on in my working life: math really is all around us in our everyday lives, it’s just a question of spotting it.”
Together with Sofie Thorsell (qualified as a teacher last spring, at centre of picture on the right) and student teachers Emely Levin (at right in the picture) and Frida Hagberg, she was given a fun job by the museum educator Johan Sveningson - to plan three maths lessons to be held in the museum for preschool to 3rd grade, 4th to 6th, and 7th to 9th grade. They had to be finished before the summer and now, in the autumn, they will teach school classes and see whether their ideas work in practice.
“It’s exciting to follow up everything and put it into practice. The math museum visits last between 75 and 90 minutes; we have thought a lot about whether that is enough time to solve the problems we set,“ says Levin.
This is the first time the museum has come up with the idea of getting help from LiU students to develop new school activities, so Sveningson presumably shares the excitement:
“It’s been great working with the students. It’s really exhilarating when they get fired up and really go for it,” he says, laughing.
“They have a totally different outlook than we teachers who have been at it a while. Students don’t see obstacles and then they are up-to-date with the new syllabus so they make good connections.”
Three of the students sit and look out at one of the museum exhibition rooms, looking every bit as enthusiastic as Sveningson described.
“We were given completely free rein and we decided pretty much immediately that the lessons would deal with geometry. It can easily become a bit dull and boring in the classroom, but here it is everywhere, in designs and constructions. You just need to look around,” explains Thorsell.
That’s the Banana over there,” they say, pointing. It’s a helicopter that visitors can get into and which is the starting point for one of the problems for the younger children.
“They have to think about how many can fit in. The crux is simply that there is no simple or right answer. Standing, sitting or children heaped up on one another? And that is the point with the problems we have created; it’s not a question of doing sums, but of solving math problems and thinking and reasoning,” says Levin.
And using their imaginations.
“For example, they get to go on a treasure hunt looking for different geometric shapes like polygons, spheres, cones, cylinders... these are everywhere you look on an aircraft. Then they get to draw their own maps that will lead others to that place and they get to use old measures like hands or feet or fathoms; or even create their own. Mobile phones, for example,” says Anna-Karin Arvidsson.
Pupils in grades 7 to 9 get to go on a more advanced “treasure hunt”.
“For example, they have to find actual objects based on geometric formula they are given. Usually they would just add numbers to the formulae and calculate a result. We want to show them the practical use,” says Thorsell.
Of course it’s quite something to calculate the size of a crashed aeroplane.
“This is an exciting place in itself and the exhibits are fantastic. A math lesson is inspiring in a completely different way than if it was in a classroom. This job has definitely sparked our own imaginations, and we will glean a lot out from it once we become practising teachers,” she says before all three offer a tour of the displays and how and where they think the various math problems can be solved.
And they keep on coming up with new ideas: In the recently opened workshop for the museum mascots, Viggo and Drakel, or outside in “the storm”, where visitors can feel the simulated wind behind an aeroplane as it starts. “You can easily find a fun way here to calculate wind speeds!”
Text and photo: Gunilla Pravitz, 14 September 2012
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Last updated: Tue Jun 04 14:27:37 CEST 2013
