ARE YOU AN ALLERGIC PERSON?

Hi guys!!!

How are you?? Today, I'm here to show you another idea to work statistics with your students, they'll become investigators!! 🕵️‍♀️ Don't you think they'd love this idea?? Come on! Read this post for more information...

I don't know if you remember it, but, in the last post about statistics, I told you that we should show to our students how to classify data, the different ways to do it, the graphics we could use...

Now, I want to recommend you to introduce your students in the process of creating their own graphics with their own collection of data! So as to do it, I've thought about working with allergies. What's your opinion about it? I'm going to explain to you my idea...

We could explain to students that, in groups of 4 people, they have to search for information about allergies in their families. How to do it? Easy! In order to develop their digital competence, first of all, they'd have to create their own google questionnaire! Some of the questions that should appear are the following ones: 

• Are you an allergic person?

• When did you first know that you were allergic? (If you aren't allergic put "No" and if you are put 0,1, 2, ...) 

• How many different allergies do you have? (0,1,2, ...)

• What are you allergic to?

Some of their relatives have to complete the questionnaire, and then, with all the data, they could create different graphics using Microsoft Excel!

For example, they could calculate the percentage of people that are allergic and compare it with the one of people who are not allergic, they could classify people depending on the moment (their age) they discovered they had an allergy... They could also classify people by the number of allergies they have... and then, they could also see which type of allergies are more common, etc. 

As you can see, they could do a really interesting project with these data. Obviously, they'd need our help during this process, but I'm sure that it'll be worth it!

What do you think about it? Let me know your opinion in the comments!

Thank you!!!!

Games to learn how to count

Hi everyone!

I'm here again to share with you a really interesting video I've found about measurement. As you probably know, there are a lot of aspects related to measurement, and today, I've decided to find out about counting. Maybe you think that it's really basic, but it's necessary to work this content. 

Children, when they are small, don't know how to count, must learn the numbers and the way they increase, so, if we give class to students of 6 or 7 years old, it would be essential to ensure that they are able to count in a proper way and identify the different numbers. Due to this fact, I want to share with you the following video 

I firmly believe that all the activities proposed in this video are AMAZING! And you could use them in class, or even with your children! I'm sure they'll love the tasks, and the materials are really easy to obtain and build, so... what are you waiting for???

Come on! Let's build these materials for your students... However, I want to advise you that you can build the materials with them too! You can use the Art Education lessons so as to work on these materials, and this way, the students realize that subjects are so connected! Don't you think it would be great?

Let's go!!! See you soon!

Representation of data

Hi there!!

As everybody knows, we're currently living a really complicated moment in our country and other parts of the world because of the coronavirus... We usually try to get children out of these types of problems, but I think that we could use it to continue teaching them about measurement.

In this case, we could show different ways to represent the data of the infected people in Spain, such as the following examples: 

We can use a cartogram. With circles of different size, indicating on a map the number of people infected in each autonomous community  (taking as a reference the 21st May):

We can use a population pyramid so as to show the distribution of cases by sex and age in Spain:

The evolution of the pandemic in Spain. I mean, its growth curve. We could show it with a bar graph:

It's evident that there are a lot of ways to represent the data, but here I've shown you several examples. If you want to work it with students, you could show them some example like these ones and then, they could create their own representations of data, following your indications. I'm sure they will enjoy it and, at the same time, they are learning about something important and contemporary. I believe that I'd use this type of activities in the 6th grade, but it's up to you!

What do you think about that??

See you in the next post! Bye bye!

I measure my school... I measure my world

Hi everyone!

Today, I'm here to show you a new challenge you can do with your students. Are you ready??

In this challenge, students would have to measure their school! I think that they would be really interested and motivated with this activity. What do you think?

First of all, we have to decide what we want that students measure, for example: the playground, a class, the hall... whatever we want to. The challenge is that students have to draw a reduction scale plan of what they have measured. So... we have to explain to them how to do it. 

Depending on the measure of the place we have selected, the scale would be different, but I recommend you to do an example with the students, like this one:

We have a class that measures 10 metres long and 4 metres wide. We want to represent it on an A4 sheet of paper, so, I need to know its measurements: 29,7 centimetres long and 21 centimetres wide. 

Now so as to have all the data in the same unit, we change the 10 metres long and 4 metres wide of the class to centimetres: 10000 cm x 400 cm. We want to draw this in the sheet of paper, but we don't have enough space to do it, so... let's do a reduction scale!

We have to think about how much we want to reduce our original space. In this case, we are going to try to divide it by 20, and our scale would be 1:20. It means that a centimetre in the scale would be 20 centimetres in the real life. If we do that, we'd have 10000:20, that would be 50 cm, and 400:20, that would be 20 cm. As you can see, this is not useful for us, because this space wouldn't fix in our sheet of paper:

We cannot draw 50x20 cm in a sheet of 29,7x21 cm

So, we have to continue trying scales so as to find one useful for drawing this classroom... we have to reduce it more, so we would try 1:30, 1:40... until we find the good one! Are you ready to put into practice this game with the students? I'm sure they'll love it... you can do it helping them, and little by little, they will be able to do it by themselves. 

But... first of all, don't you think that we should explain to the students the concept of scale? Here, we have a video in Spanish that could be really useful for teaching this concept!

I hope you'll like this post... if you have some recommendations, feel free to comment!!

Bye bye!! 😽

Games to practice the concept of mass

Hi there! 

The other day, I explained you some interesting games to practice the concept of length with students, and today, I've decided that I want to share a new game, this time to practice the concept of mass.

First game: Searching for "gold nuggets" (I)

In this game, we would create gold nuggets of equal size but different materials: little stones or pieces of paper, and students should find them around the class. In groups, they would have to try to found the most number of gold nuggets. Once they have found all the gold nuggets, by groups, they would have to calculate the total mass using a weighing scales. Students would have gold nuggets of different mass, so they would realize that, maybe, some groups can have more gold nuggets than others, but less mass. This way, students should reflect about this fact, and with our help, they would realize that the number of gold nuggets doesn't matter if we want to measure the mass, because even the size seems equal, depending on the material, the mass would be different.

Second game: Searching for "gold nuggets" (II)

In the first game, students realized that, even the size was the same, taking into account that the material of the gold nuggets was different, some of them had more mass than others. Nevertheless, so as to ensure that they understand that if they are of the same material, the mass would be the same, we would repeat this activity, but in this case, only with the gold nuggets created with little painted stones. They'd repeat the process of searching the stones around the class, but this time, they would realize that the group with more number of stones is the one who have more mass. Again, they'd have to reflect about it. We'd tell them that they have to see if the material is different. Once they'd have realized that the material of every stone is the same, we'd explain them that, if the material and the size is the same, these objects would have the same mass too. 

What can I do if the NBA wants to employ me?

Hi guys!

Today, I've been searching some activities to share with you, and I have found a really exciting one! It'd be a good challenge for the students so... let's go!

WHAT CAN I DO IF THE NBA WANTS TO EMPLOY ME?

I think that a good challenge for Primary students would be to tell them that the NBA is interested in employing them... but for that, they have to follow some steps. 

First question: Do you know that, in the NBA, the height of the players is expressed in feet and inches, and their weight in pounds? If they want to employ you and play with them, you have to know this ways of measuring. United States, Liberia and Burma are not related to the International System of Units (SI), so they have their own measurement units. So as to be able to know your dimensions, you need to know what is the relation between feet and inches, and centimetres or metres: 

A foot	30, 48 cm
3,28 feet	A metre
A inch	2,54 cm
0,39 inches	A centimetre
A pound	453,592 grams
2,20462 pounds	A kilogram

To start with, you need to know your height and your weight. Then transform it!

I measure ___ metres --> I measure ___ inches

My weight is ___ kilograms --> My weight is ___ pounds

Second question: Now, you have to imagine that they told you that to arrive at your new home, you have to walk 25 miles. You have to discover how many kilometres 25 miles are. But... how can you do that? I help you! 1,61 kilometres correspond to a mile, and a kilometre corresponds to 0,62 miles.

Third question: Now, they told you that from the pavilion to your home, you have to drive! The speed limits are expressed in miles per hour, so you don't know them. Let's change the Spanish speed limits (km/h) to the United States ones, expressed in mi/h.

Maximum speed	Spain (km/h)	United States (mi/h)
Motorway	120 km/h
Road	100 km/h
Streets	50 km/h

What do you think about it? I believe it's a brilliant idea to work with students! They will enjoy the process and won't get bored. I challenge you to put into practice in your class! 

See you in the next post. Bye bye!

You can find activities like this one in the following link: "Se aprende a medir midiendo, y a usar medidas usándolas".

Games to practice the concept of length

Hi there!!!

Today, I'm here to share with you some games you can use with the students so as to start teaching the concept of length, so they are thought for little children. I hope you'll like it!

First game: Creating necklaces!

You need several materials of different length for creating necklaces. Each students should choose ten pieces and introduce them in a rope. After that, they should reflect about the length of each necklace: have all of them the same length? does the length of the necklace depend on the chosen materials? how can they know the length of each necklace?... Then, it'd be good to challenge them to do a shorter necklace, a longer necklace... using different materials.

Second game: Throwing bottle caps!

For this game, we need several bottle caps. Each students should throw the bottle cap from the same place. They will have to observe which bottle cap is farer and, as a consequence, which distance from them to the bottle cap is longer. We'll discuss with them which segment is the longest, the shortest... and it'd be essential to challenge them, telling them things that are not true, so as to see if they correct us or not and to confirm that they understand the concept of length properly. Then, they will have to measure with a meter the length, so as to verify their hypotheses.

Finally, it'd be interesting that children repeat this activity, but starting from different points. This way, it'd be more difficult to know which one of the created segments is the longest, the shortest...

Third game: The game of ropes

For this game, we only need 5 ropes of the same length. The students, organised in 5 groups, have to put their rope in the floor in the way they want to. Then, all of us, we have to observe the different ropes and, as teachers, we'd ask students several questions: Are all the ropes equal? Is the length of the ropes the same? Because each rope occupies a different space, or not? If we put all the ropes as a straight line, what happens? This way, children will understand that, even at first sight, it can seem that they are different, all the ropes have the same length; depending on how we put them (straight, curved, with a square shape...), the visual image is different, but the length is the same. Then, students should measure the ropes, so as to verify that all of them are of the same length.

That's it! These are the games I wanted to show you today... I hope they'll be useful for you.. If you want more games... you only have to comment it below. See you soon!!!