Silverstone Study Centre

Tutpup is a simple and secure online environment that combines worldwide competition with the acquisition of basic maths and spelling skills. My primary PfS students took a few minutes to register, a process that is teacher-led and anonymous, and they then were left to evaluate it at home or school, and to find their own levels of challenge and achievement. It is development or beta- software giving the students an insight into the frustrations and rewards of how modern software is developed with a live audience of users.

The seven primary schools have clocked up between them, in just over two weeks, a staggering 45 hours and 1 minute of game play outside their time at Silverstone. The reporting feature of the site allows the teacher to drill down from school to class to individual level to see which skills have been developed and how successfully. Finding a way of getting students to practice the traditionally boring-yet-crucial basic skills of tables and spelling has seemingly never been so entertaining - at least that is what the students and the stats are telling me!

By the way - it is free!

Year Six students from St Lawrence Junior School have been enjoying the PfS on the Road experience with Anna Letts, the PfS classroom practitioner. Over the next two days they will be visiting Silverstone to further exercise their creative- and problem-solving skills. You can follow the action on their blog.

6pm Update:

This was a switched-on and motivated group. The recipe for everyday success at Silverstone is:

• I must have fun
• The students must have fun
• We need to get stuff done!

I had one of my most enjoyable days ever teaching at Silverstone and I think the students had a good  time as well. I love the picture below. The look of concentration on the students’ faces as they pick the motorbikes to time was typical of their attitude during the day. I’m not sure though where my attention is in the background

Sponne Cluster Year 5 & 6 mathematicians have ‘graduated’ today from the Study Centre’s G&T programme. They were a superb bunch and you can view on our G&T site, the final session’s activities that were themed around explorations of trigonometry around the circuit.

The starter activity, however, was based around a story that I heard from Alan, who has been at Silverstone for many years. He told me that the study centre finds itself both in Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire. I checked it in Google Earth and it is true - the county border is clearly maked on the photo (left). I thought it would be a great to have a line - à la Greenwich Meridian - running through the centre of the Study Centre. The challenge for the students was to find and place it for me.

Working in pairs, they approached the problem in different ways, using a mixture of virtual and meatspace measuring. Some used a compass, others a protractor, a trundle wheel or measuring tape. It really was a treat to behold, particularly as I did not have a clue what the answer was. Here are a few photos of the industrious explorers.

All the creative approaches though came up with the virtually the same solution in the end so I’m quite confident that the measuring tape below marks the county border.

Key Stage One pupils were given £150 to spend from the Silverstone Merchandise catalogue. They had to ensure that they made purchasing choices that the other 19 members of the group would consider ‘fair’.  At the end teams presented their decisions and evaluations to the rest of the group via a streaming link from the media room. It never ceases to amaze me how confident some pupils are in front of camera. The maths and evaluation isn’t bad either!

The boys from Chenderit School smashed the record for the ‘Driver Birthday’ Challenge yesterday. With a combination of slick teamwork and accurate dates, the teams arranged themselves into chronological order from a random start in a scarcely believable 1 minute and 44 seconds, more than a minute quicker than the previous best.

They also captured and captioned themselves beautifully below!

We enjoyed a great day with a superb bunch of talented year 5 and 6 mathematicians from six schools in the local area. Take a look as well at our Gifted and Talented site to see what they got up to.

Jonny did a great job leading the maths activities last week. Here he is in action!

You need your wits about you for the Driver Numbers activity - a combination of  speed of movement and  mathematical thought together with with a huge amount of teamwork to come up with the answers. Here are Bracken Leas readying themselves for the task.

Students last week focussed their attention on the costs associated with running a Formula One Team. They were given a brief and asked to calculate the cost of sending the core personnel of a Formula One team from Silverstone to Indianapolis, the site of the US Grand Prix. Petrol, hotel, food and flights costs were calculated and re-calculated. We decided that the running of a Formula One is an expensive business! We also found that when presenting our financial results, it is a good idea to include clear units in our workings so we can remember what we are talking about.

Here are some photos of Roade College students collaborating on the tasks.