Maths in Context By Madeline Van Noorden

The teenage brain is an enigma that has baffled teachers for centuries. The ‘Maths in Context’ workshop by Christine Watson instantly captured my attention with the quote “The teenage brain isn’t motivated by what happens in the future like exams, jobs, or buying a house. Find out what motivates them now”.  The workshop challenged us to recontextualise maths teaching to reflect our students' interests. Christine facilitated dynamic and engaging activities enhanced with her humour and anecdotes.  
 
For our first activity, each table was given several different images depicting various scenes. We were tasked with choosing an image and creating a related maths question to share with everyone. My group chose a picture of the queue of cats with their owners for the ‘Britain’s Happiest Cat’ competition. Of my group's many excellent contributions, we decided on ‘What proportion of cats in this photo look like their owners?’. Some groups’ questions were thought-provoking while others earned themselves a big laugh. This activity exemplified the creativity of maths and helped build more personal connections within groups. 
 
Next, we reflected on the type of maths typically used in classrooms and how it can tend towards surrealism. To illustrate this, we used maths to evaluate whether we could outrun a volcanic eruption! The answer is unsurprisingly no. This demonstrated how maths problems should be grounded in reality to avoid unnecessary abstraction. And, realistically, I would probably trip over before I could even have a chance to outrun a volcanic eruption. 
 
The final activity was my favourite. Did you know that the most popular career choice for children is celebrity? In particular, celebrity controversy is often a hot topic for young people. I expect you may have heard of the song ‘Crazy in Love’ claimed to be written by Beyonce. Upon its launch, tabloids speculated that Beyonce could not have written such a catchy song herself. Here we showed that Beyonce must have written it herself! The mathematical basis for this is the consistency between the mean number of letters in the words of that song compared with her other songs. Later that evening 'Crazy in Love' started playing at the bar I was at, and I excitedly recalled this activity to my friends, garnering their interest in maths too.   
 
I adore maths, but for all this adoration, this workshop has reminded me that a passion for mathematics, like any subject, must be cultivated. It is unlikely to be love at first sum for most students. My takeaway is that striving to think beyond the textbook and contextualise maths to students’ realities cannot simply ground their understanding but also inspire their interest.  

By Madeline Van Noorden 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/madeline-van-noorden

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