Primary Maths - The Paralympics

The London 2012 Olympics were the highlight of the sporting year with new world records achieved, new faces bursting onto the sports scene, joy for many and despair for others. But then at the end of the day, the important thing for all was just being a part of it.

Whilst all the hype was over the main games, the Paralympics give us the chance in schools to continue the citizenship work we began with the Olympics.

In this set of Maths activities you’ll find the chance to work across the curriculum and enrich the learning of your pupils.


Activity One – Units of Measurement

LO: Be able to understand the concept of standard units
       To develop a standard unit of measure they can use

Units of measurement are vital to us to ensure we do a job accurately, to get what we pay for in shops and to compare things and of course, in the Olympics they are used to help decide the winners in events but how did we get them?

Many of our units of measurement come from ancient times when parts of the body were used; so a thumb’s width gave us an inch, a yard was the distance from our nose to the end of our outstretched arm whilst a foot, well that’s obvious. Metric measurements are more scientifically calculated with a metre being 1/10,000,000 of the distance from the equator to the North Pole.

The difficulty with all of these is that they can differ between people and even the geographical measurement can vary as the North Pole is moveable. This activity helps children to understand measure and why it needs to be standardised.

Get the children to draw around their feet and cut out four examples of their own foot shape. Now ask them to use the ‘feet’ to measure the width of their desks.

Talking Point: Are the measurements the same and if not, why?

Now get the children into groups and get them to use the ‘feet’ to measure the width of the classroom.

Talking Point: Compare answers from the groups. What do the children notice and why do they think it’s happened? How could we ensure we all get the same answers?

Tell the children that we use standardised units of measurement to avoid these problems.

Talking Point:  If we were to decide on our own standard unit of measure, how could we do it?

The children may decide on one person’s foot or decide to do an average of all the children’s feet sizes. Duplicate the chosen measure and use it now to recalculate the measurements done previously.

At Home: Invent your own unit of measurement and measure different objects with it. In school, swap your homework with a partner and ask them to work out how long your unit of measurement is in cm or m.


Activity Two – Measuring Time

LO: Understand that time is divided up into units which we use to measure its passing
       Be able to convert between different units of measurement

Some years ago there was an April Fool’s Day joke that time was going to be made metric. Imagine the day split into ten portions and each ‘hour’ portion divided into 100 minutes with each minute having 100 seconds.

This activity allows the children to use calculators to work out equivalent periods by comparing metric time with our usual time and to work out a timetable of daily events based on the metric time.

Talking Point:  How can we work out how many normal hours are in a metric hour?

Using a calculator, the children should be able to divide 24 hours by 10 metric ones and suggest that there would be 2.4 hours or 144 minutes in a metric hour. They can then progress to working out how many minutes in a metric minute (be careful, you can’t just divide 60 by 100) and onto seconds.

Talking Point: How would you make a year metric?
Talking Point: Is metric time a good idea?

At Home: Using the ‘new clock’ draw up a timetable of your day with the new times so breakfast might be at 3.0 am in metric time, you may go to school at 3.3 am and school may start at 3.6 am. You could illustrate your work with a new watch or clock face.


Activity Three - Simple Algebra

LO:  Be able to represent sums with equations where the letters represent variables
         Be able to solve problems using algebraic equations

The Paralympics can be used to practise simple algebra, by simply looking at news reports of the events. For example:
‘Oscar Pistorius won the 100m in 10.91 seconds, improving on his previous time by 0.3 seconds’.

To find out his previous best we can simply do 10.91 + 0.3 = 11.21 but we can write out the sum as an algebraic equation thus:
P = 10.91 +0.3 or even p = t + d where p = previous time, t = new time and d = difference.

This formula can then be used to remind children of how to do similar questions.

Other examples will include perhaps:
‘Janez Roskar’s 90m javelin throw was twice as far as that thrown by the last placed competitor’.

This time the algebra looks like this:
90 = 2c
So from this we can calculate that the last place threw 45m

Use these examples to get you started then look for examples from daily reports on the games
1. In the 200m the margin between first and last place was 0.52s with the winner coming home in 21.49s
2. The discus event saw the winner throw one and a half times the distance that won the event in 2008. His throw of 33.3m was the best this year.
3. In the 50m pool, the leaders were already half a pool ahead by the third length.
4. The gold medallist in the fencing event scored 12 points more than the silver medallist and 34 more than the bronze with the medal positions racking up 95 points between them. (a tricky one!)

Dave Lewis
Primary Teacher

Primary Literacy - The Paralympics

Whilst the Paralympics would seem to give us plenty of scope for activities in sport and in maths, there’s a lot of English work that can easily be drawn out of it, linking to other curriculum areas. In the following activities we’ll show you how to use the event for some thought provoking English.

Activity One - Overcoming adversity

LO: To be able to ask relevant questions to obtain information
       To be able to plan an interview and take notes on the answers given

One of the overriding features of the Paralympics is the courage and motivation that athletes have had to enable them to avoid self-pity and to achieve a goal despite the adversity.

Many of us are faced with adversity in our lives and it’s the way we deal with it that defines us. In this activity the children develop interviewing techniques as well as gain an understanding into what it is like to be unable to compete on the same level as able bodied people.

The Organisation England Athletics supports disabled athletes in their sports and encourages local athletics clubs to do the same. 

Invite a member of your local club to visit school and to tell the children their story. The children should prepare questions beforehand to ask the athlete and focus on the level of determination it took for them to be able to compete in their chosen sport.

Follow this up with a citizenship lesson on facing and overcoming adversity, not necessarily a physical one but maybe one in learning or in social situations.

Ask the children to talk about things they find difficult to do, perhaps a particular subject or a topic in the subject and find out from them what their response is to facing the problem. Ask them to write a short piece comparing the difficulty they face with that the athlete did and identify similarities and differences.
At Home: Can the children find examples from other fields where people have overcome great adversity to be successful – examples could include Helen Keller, Beethoven, Einstein or Franklin D Roosevelt.

Activity Two – Biography

LO: To be able to write for different purposes and audiences
      To identify relevant information in research activities and make notes on it

There is often a tragic, yet ultimately heart-warming story behind the lives of disabled athletes. The website
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/02/25/disabled.athletes/index.html

lists some of the world’s greatest and best known disabled athletes and tells a little of their story.
Biography is a great writing skill to acquire and this activity helps the children to develop it.
Read the children the brief biographies given on the website and ask them to choose a disabled athlete that they want to find out more about. Use the internet to research key information in note form and ask them to write a biography of them.

Begin by reading a brief biography of a famous person to the children and ask them to tell you the features of the biography. They are likely to include that it’s chronological, deals with their family life to begin with then lists their achievements. It uses a lot of description but is still concise. It also uses no dialogue.
With younger classes you can use this template:

What is their name?

When and where were they born?

When and how did they become disabled?

How and when did they become interested in their sport?

What were the difficulties they faced?

How did they try to overcome them?

What successes have they had?

What are their hopes for the future?

Older children can still use the template as a guide, completing their writing as a passage rather than as a series of statements.

At Home: Ask the children to find out what the difference is between biography and autobiography and think of a way in which the two might differ in terms of how the subject is perceived.

Activity Three - Empathetic Poetry

LO: To be able to use the structure of a poem to help express the emotion of empathy
      To be able to respond empathetically to expressed emotions

Empathy is a difficult emotion to develop but by listening to stories of someone’s life and experiences together with the opportunity to talk about it afterwards, you can help children to develop empathy. Use one of the biographies from a previous activity, either one of the athletes or one of the other famous people who overcame difficulties or disabilities.

Questions are important here and you should begin by asking the children to think of what they’d like to find out more detail of about the person. Encourage them to ask questions which use emotion words such as ‘How did you feel when…?’ ‘What did people think when…?’ or ‘Did you think you would ever…?’
These kinds of questions elicit responses which the children can take a position on, either they will feel sorry for the person, pleased that they overcame the problem, in awe of their determination or proud of their achievements.

Poetry can be a very expressive way of showing emotions and no less so than to display empathy.
Depending on the ability of the children you can start them at different stages of the process in this activity.
For the less able, give them a template where they need to make a response to a statement. e.g. 

When I found out that I couldn’t walk...
When I found out I couldn’t run to play with my friends…
When I found I couldn’t see…

The responses could be in the simplest form as a verb such as ‘I cried’ or in a longer sentence.
More able children could use a template that allows for more detailed information such as…

When I see children running I..
When I hear children playing …
When a friend picks up a puppy …

The responses to these encourage a longer sentence with more emphasis on how they might feel if they can’t walk, don’t have functioning arms or can’t see.

Finally, the able poets in the class could really get to grips with feelings, either if it’s them in that position or if they see another with disabilities by starting their poem off with how they feel.

At Home: Use a dictionary or thesaurus to find words which convey feelings. Use them in the next English lesson to improve the verbs in your poem.