A splashing good time for Maths Week 2024: Ocean Odyssey 

Over the past two weeks the maths outreach team have been transforming how Year 4’s in Norfolk interact with maths, introducing tangrams, fractals and some buried treasure to broaden understanding and engagement with the subject. 

Over two sessions the team have celebrated maths week with a sea themed array of activities aimed to pique interest in maths and root problems in fun but challenging scenarios. 

Primary schools were invited to come along and pupils navigated five different tasks throughout the day, Undersea Mystery, Treasure Dive, Octopus Operations, Tangram Treasure and Fascinating Fractals. These aimed to challenge pupils to think about problems differently, work together to collaborate on tasks, and develop their maths skills. Many pupils were pushing their maths knowledge and abilities far beyond what they experience in the classroom. 

Tom Marjoram, Outreach Lead said:  

"We love running these maths themed days and seeing so many students enthusiastic about spending a day undertaking maths activities. Our thanks goes to the schools and staff for supporting the events and ensuring they are such a success." 

Alongside their tasks, pupils were also searching for letters as they completed each activity. Gathering all of these letters culminated in an oceans themed anagram to solve at the end of the day. 

Working together, pupils collaborated in a game to retrieve sunken treasure, trying to achieve the same goal while working for their own interests. Quickfire sums were needed for another activity with a race to get correct answers, and an octopus to be decorated. Codewords were waiting to be cracked in another activity that encouraged speedy sums to solve an anagram. 

Collaboration and teamwork were needed to create sea creatures with shapes in a tangram task, starting small and working up to huge shapes on the floor! Never-ending patterns were discovered and explored in the fractals activity, by the end of the day pupils had created a fabulous pattern inspired by coral reefs.