Game, SET, Maths!

- By Beth Paine

The final Maths Scholarship CPD event for the year was the Scholars CPD Workshop, held in Birmingham. Throughout the day, there was plenty of time for networking with other trainee and experienced teachers, which has been a highlight of the events for me. 

The first session of the day- Game, SET, Maths was led by Dr. Niki Kalaydzhieva from UCL. 
Firstly we were introduced to the card game, SET and given time to play this in small groups. In essence, the game involves laying out 24 cards, aiming to identify a ‘SET’- which is when 4 cards either share characteristics (colour, shape, shading and number), or are each unique for these 4 features. I had never played this game before so I was thrilled when I was able to identify my first SET! 

After exploring the game for a while, we were brought back together as a whole group and shared some questions that students may be curious about. The key question for the rest of the session was- ‘What is the maximum number of cards for which there is no set?’. Led by Niki, we began to investigate. By fixing characteristics- the card being red and 1, we were able to reduce our problem and form some generalisations about when a set occurs. We progressed on to fixing only 1 characteristic, our card being green, which allowed for further investigation. The final stages of the process involved encoding the characteristics algebraically and using modular arithmetic and topology to demonstrate what a set looks like geometrically. 

Overall, this session was a great start to an enjoyable day of CPD. Whilst some of the mathematics may be too challenging for the students I teach, Niki gave some useful insights into how to adapt this to suit different age groups. As we come to the end of term, enrichment activities (like this) are great to promote the joy of maths. I may even be tempted to start a problem-solving club in September. Plus, it was great to do some mathematical investigation myself, which isn’t something I get a lot of time to do at school!

 By Beth Paine

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