Every week in form time there is a day dedicated to Numeracy at our school. I have designed a series of activities for form tutors to do with students during this time. They are designed to take around 5-10 minutes and to be age appropriate for any year. The ones below are specifically linked to Design and Technology and how Numeracy is used within it.
Recipes and proportion
Looking for a way to get students to practice how to use recipes with proportion. Try these two activities in form time.
>Download proportion and recipes here
>Download baking and proportion (alternative) here
Using scales
Want a way to get students to practice using scales in form time? Try the first activity for a traditional approach - or you could always look at the Scoville Scale for a bit of fun.
>Download measuring quantities here
>Download The Scoville Scale here
Pi Day - 14th March - 3.14
Each year we hold a competition to get our students to memorise Pi - in honour of National Pi Day 3.14. Here are two activities for form time to support this along with a couple of extra activities that can be used to support student to practice using Pi in the context of circles.
>Download Pi Day here (alternative) - Bit more jazzed up...
>Download Engineering design here
Seam Allowances - Textiles
There is quite a lot of numeracy used in textiles. This activity looks at how seam allowances are calculated for fabric.
Packaging - Graphics
There are lots of lovely links between Maths and Graphics in how packaging is designed. This activity looks at how different nets are used to create different packaging.
Converting Measures
When I asked DT teachers what aspects of numeracy their students struggled with most, what often came up was how students struggled to convert between centimetres and millimetres - most measurements in DT being in millimetres. Here's a form time activity to support with this.
>Download converting measures here
Using Formulae
>Download Use of Formulae here