|
Casio Master Class
“On a Saturday?” was
the incredulous response I got when I told people about the Master Class
I was helping with in Wolverhampton. The possibility that a group of
teenagers would choose to give up their weekend to attend a Maths
session puzzled most of my friends. For me, the challenge was how to
interest them once they were there!
|
Picture the scenario: a
whole class of “Gifted and Talented” Year 9 pupils from across
Wolverhampton for about 1½ hours. Assume no prior graphical calculator
use.
What activities would
you do?
To try and find a level
starting point, I decided to steer clear of the common topics of Key
Stage 3 Maths and instead we spent the morning looking at random
numbers. I began the session with a game of CountUp which gives pupils
six numbers with which to obtain a target number in thirty seconds. By
chance, the numbers were sufficiently kind that we did not need the
assistance of Carol Vorderman and some pupils were brave enough to
present their methods to the group.
|
 |
As well as getting the
pupils focussed, the game enabled me to draw their attention to the
random numbers involved in the design of the program. We discussed what
was meant by ‘random’ in this context and the possible outcomes for the
six numbers and the target. I asked whether it would be fair if I made
up the numbers myself but there was no consensus, so I got them all to
type into their calculators a ‘random’ number between 1 and 10. We
collected these together in a tally chart and found that some ‘random’
numbers were more popular than others.
Having established that
humans are not good random number generators, I showed the pupils how to
produce a random number on the calculators (OPTN F6 PROB Ran#). This
generates a number between 0 and 1, to ten decimal places – a suitably
random-looking number but not really what we were after. However by
multiplying by 10, the number is brought into the range 0-10 and I then
introduced the Int command (OPTN F6 NUM Int) to make the number
produced, an integer.
The pupils now had all
the knowledge they needed to investigate producing random numbers within
a required range. They quickly became confident using the commands but
found it more challenging to produce integers between 1 and 6. Despite
the clue of trying 6Ran#, some of the group struggled to progress from
here, blaming the calculator ( “It never gives me a six”) when in fact
the command line needed a little more refining. For many pupils, it
helped to look at it pictorially, using a number line showing the range
of numbers produced and then ‘shift it’ to the desired range.
By the end, one group
had even how to generate the ‘large numbers’ for CountUp (25, 50, 75,
100).
To close the session, I
introduced the pupils to Nick’s game (named after Nick Martin,
Bedfordshire) which uses the calculator as a dice-simulator, ‘rolling’
numbers form 1 to 6 (more random numbers!) However the calculator also
has a pre-defined ‘wipe-out number’, which when it arises ends the game.
All the pupils begin
the first game by standing and the first throw is made. The number that
is produced becomes the number of points won by the pupils (so if a 5 is
thrown, then all pupils get 5 points). Before the next throw, the
players have to decide whether to remain in the game or not. By
remaining standing, they are able to increase their score by the number
shown on the next throw, but risk losing all their points if the
wipe-out number comes up. By sitting down, they bank their score but
cannot re-enter the game.
The game continues in
this way until either all pupils are seated (unlikely!) or the wipe-out
number ends the game (to someone’s anguish!) All pupils are then back in
again for the second round of the game. After five games, the pupils add
up their grand totals.
These totals were
entered onto the calculator and we discussed what sort of graphs might
be used to display the results. I showed the pupils a Box and Whisker
plot of the results and encouraged them to suggest what the different
markers indicated and where their own score lay. The pupils discussed in
their groups how they decided whether to remain standing or to sit down
in order to establish a tactic to employ for the next game.
Overall the Master
class proved to be a success. The mathematics had been, dare I say,
‘enjoyable’ and we had used ICT to explore some new ideas.
If you are interested
in running a Master class in your area and would like to use the G-Plus
Team from Casio, please contact us for more details.
education@casio.co.uk
The above article was
written by Vicky Law, an independent consultant, on behalf of Casio.
|
