Many thanks to Ravinesh Chand of Avondale Intermediate for sharing these photos of his maths class taking part in CensusAtSchool.
Maths Week 2022 will be held between Monday 8 August and Friday 12 August.
This year is the 25th anniversary of Maths Week – it started in 1998. To mark the occasion, we are having a “Design a Maths Week Logo” competition for all students in
Years 1 – 11. Entries will be made on the Maths Week website during Maths Week. There will be four year-level prizes. Supplementary prizes may also be awarded.
Maths Week provides resources for teachers and students to support the mathematics and statistics curriculum. Last year, 278 000 students and 6901 teachers throughout New Zealand registered for Maths Week. Maths Week material is available free, online, to teachers, students, and the public.
Teachers who register for Maths Week also have access to answers to questions and other notes. They will have access to this material from Monday 25 July.
The aims of Maths Week are:
- to encourage student’s interest in mathematics and statistics
- to give teachers resources that they can use in the classroom, particularly material that requires some research and which may not be readily available to them, or that can be used electronically in class
- to show the pleasure that mathematics can provide and some of the everyday places where it can be used
- to give teachers material that can provide an extension.
Maths Week resources are written in five levels for all students from Year 1 through to Year 11.
Learn more: https://www.mathsweek.co.nz
It’s not too late to register for this weekend’s AMAonline event. It’s free and you can watch it with friends!
The keynote speaker is Tim Erickson (10 am session), one of America’s top data science educators.
The title of Tim’s talk is Connecting functions and geometry through data and modeling. What a great title – talk about connections!
Check out the lineup of other great presenters and register here.
Grab a coffee and see you there!
World Wildlife Day was started by the United Nations to celebrate and raise awareness of the world’s wild animals and plants.
The theme for 2022 is ‘Recovering key species for ecosystem restoration’ and it will look at the need to reverse the fate of most critically endangered species and to support the restoration of their habitats and ecosystems.
The Albatross tracker is a resource for both primary and secondary students, looking at where our native Antipodean wandering albatross and Northern Royal albatross travel and live in Aotearoa New Zealand.
The app is Perfect for I notice…. I wonder…..
Follow a single bird, or compare the behaviour of different birds or species.
Here are some of the variables you can explore:
- Name: Darvic number/Band number/ Band combination to identify the bird
- Argos ID: Satellite tracker ID
- Colony: Breeding colony of the tagged bird
- Season: Year the bird was tracked
- Metadata: In the format Species_ breeding status_ sex_ Bird ID (eg: ANT_B_F_W12D is a breeding female Antipodean albatross with the Darvic band W12D)
- Distance Flown: Estimated distance flown since tagging
Happy albatross tracking! Let us know how you used this data in your classroom. We love to hear your data exploration stories, and what students discovered in the data.
Breaking NewsThe #DataViz Headline Challenge Starts Friday! Showcase your statistical literacy and journalism skills by submitting your clear and compelling headlines for New York Times graphs in March’s four weekly challenges. The 2022 spring contest will run from March 4 – 30. Finalists will be published on the This is Statistics website each week in partnership with the New York Times Learning Network, and top winners will get prizes. Head over to the #DataViz Headlines Challenge webpage to learn more! |
|
Amplifying Statistics and Data Science in Classrooms |
For those wanting to learn more about statistics and data science, Hollylynne Lee’s Amplifying Statistics and Data Science in Classrooms is a new set of free modules created in The PLACE that help educators:
|
Thanks to Heather Willocks from Balclutha Primary for sending these photos of her class taking part in CensusAtSchool.
Three in ten Year 11-13 students want the legal vaping age to be lowered – but a similar number want it pushed even higher.
31% of the 2,678 senior students surveyed wanted the age for buying vaping products to be decreased, but 27% wanted it increased.
The insight comes from CensusAtSchool TataurangaKiTeKura, a non-profit, online educational project that brings statistics to life in both English and Māori-medium classrooms. Supervised by teachers, students from Years 3-13 anonymously answer 34 questions in English or te reo Māori on digital devices. The project is run by the Department of Statistics at the University of Auckland in partnership with the Ministry of Education and Stats NZ.
This year, more than 19,000 students from 400 schools have taken part to date. Year 11-13 students (aged 15-18) were asked a series of additional questions, including “At what age do you think it should be legal to do the following? a) Drive b) Vote c) Buy alcohol d) Vape”. The results for the senior students taking part to date showed that 65% agreed with the legal driving age, 52% agreed with the legal voting age, 55% agreed with the legal age to buy alcohol, and 41% agreed with the legal age to buy vaping products. In addition, 27% wanted the legal voting age to be lowered to 16.
CensusAtSchool schools advisor Anne Patel says, “It is a good sign that 27% want the legal age for buying vaping products to be even older than it already is at 18. Young people need leadership from people they look up to who acknowledge and confront problems they’re facing, with the students themselves being drivers of the solutions.”
The senior students were also asked how they feel about the future. They were able to choose a range of options on a scale from ‘very positive’ to ‘very negative’. 8% felt very positive, 30% felt positive, 40% felt neutral, and 15% felt negative, and 7% felt very negative. Figures were similar for both Māori and New Zealand Europeans.
CensusAtSchool co-director Rachel Cunliffe says that this is a positive message for young people with everything going on in the world today.
The findings correspond with a Colmar Brunton/NZME survey in February and March of 1,000 adults in New Zealand which showed 42% felt that overall, things will improve in the next 12 months.
In other findings for the Year 11-13 students surveyed:
- 61% said they felt included at school always or very often, 31% said sometimes, and a further 8% said they rarely or never felt included at school.
- 57% said they did no paid work at a part-time job in the past week. 13% said they did up to 5 hours, 13% said 5 to 10 hours, and 13% said 10 to 20 hours. The remaining 4% said they did 20 or more hours of paid work at a part-time job in the past week.
CensusAtSchool runs every two years. This year’s census, the tenth, was launched on May 10 and runs until the end of 2022. More than 19,000 students from 400 schools have taken part to date.
See the questions, which schools are taking part, and a live dashboard of results on CensusAtSchool’s website.
This citizen science project aims to collect data about which birds and how many are in your backyard. This is done once a year during a particular window of time, usually for one week starting at the end of June, and the results contribute to New Zealand’s knowledge and monitoring of garden bird species and the health of the environment we live in.
Get involved! Visit The Science Learning Hub with ready-made resources.
Watch this short talk with your class about how data science skills are a superpower.
