Outdoor maths

Last week my primary 7 class headed off for the school main door from our classroom after estimating how long it would take to get there.  Estimates varied from 1min 30 secs to 10 mins!  It took 1 min 23 secs.
 
Once outdoors we looked for shapes (2D and 3D) along the side of the school building.  Most pupils missed the pentagon - the side of the security light on the wall so we started looking closer and had some good discussion about all the shapes seen. 

We have a number line marked on the ground along the school grounds so we worked out 1/25 of 100 (as we have been looking at fractions) and had to then jump along the number line in 4s  This highlighed a lot of pupils who couldn't work out moving up the line in 4s after they reached 40.  We often assume tables are secure for most pupils at this level so this was useful for assessing how secure they were.

For the final section of path each pupil estimated how many steps/hops or jumps it would take them to reach the top.  Not all very accurate but at least it got everyone warm on a cold frosty morning.

All simple activities but the pupils loved doing them outside and it allowed some revision of various maths topics before we headed to the playground for our main activity on fractions.