Etwinning

More than just Maths

Although the present curricular design maintains the traditional division in areas for the Infants and Primary levels and subjects for Secondary schools, pedagogical research recommends, as far as is possible, an interdisciplinary approach to contents. It is common to find eTwinning projects which develop activities from different areas/subjects with the participation of the respective teachers, which illustrates the increasing interest of teaching staff in this interdisciplinary methodology. Given the characteristics of this approach, on many occasions it is decided to work in a foreign language and, therefore, tasks and objectives from this subject are also developed alongside the others. However, it is more difficult to find cross curricular activities which include mathematics, so we are highlighting below some of those which we have seen among the projects entered for the 2012 National eTwinning Prizes:

The famous Fibonacci series (1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21…) has been the subject of an activity carried out by the students from the IES Alonso de Madrigal school in Avila, together with their partners in the A taste of Maths (ATOM) project, the aim of which is to encourage the curiosity and interest of the students in mathematics. The students at the participating schools, have written poems about bread as the main theme of the composition, with verses which contain the same number of words as the Fibonacci series. The poems have been written in all the languages of the participants and in English and have been published in this virtual book.  

Select those that are in English or another language that you know. How about writing you own poem? 

Combining mathematics, but this time with Environmental, social and cultural sciences, this attractive competition has been developed in the ICT, you and me project. In this case, the Spanish participants belong to the CEP Siete Campas-Zorrozgoiti school in Bilbao and they have put their maths competencies in practice with a series of questions on geometry, symmetry, fractions and Roman numerals, starting with the geography, shields and flags of their project partners. These questions have been published with QuizRevolution so that you too can check your knowledge:

The French students in the GOAL! Go Outside And Learn project, in which the Galician students from the IES Ramón Cabanillas school have also participated, have travelled through the Solar System without leaving the school. As they were studying the characteristics of the planets, they made a scale representation of their location in the Solar System in the school playground. Without doubt a very creative way of applying mathematical proportion to better understand the world we live in. 

Working with companions and contents from other subjects is always enriching and for the students what better way to help them to transfer their knowledge to real life? We are sure you can think of other topics with which to work on your subject.