PROJECT TITLE: Real World Maths: From Influencers to Cakes and Footy Fields

School Name: Bob Hawke College

Teacher’s Name: Sarah Dunis

Year Group: 10

Number of students: 20

Creative’s Name: Amanda Kendle

Creative Practices: podcasting and writing

Main Curriculum Focus – Mathematics (Year 10 Pre-Essentials)

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Context

This group of students had not had much success with maths in the past, and it’s far from their favourite subject; their teacher, Sarah Dunis, is a former engineer turned teacher with a strong desire to connect with these students and make them more enthusiastic about maths, and get them to see they know more than they realise. Connecting maths to the real world, we decided, would be the most useful way forward.

“It’s not really a subject. It has a little bit of lots of subject in it. It’s easier to do a project like this than a normal maths lesson. Everyone is trying. Even that naughty group at the back.” (Student)

WHAT WE DID  

Project overview

In Term 2, we focused on our “Influencer Millionaires” project, guiding students through the process of creating an influencer avatar and deciding how their influencer could make money by posting videos on social media platforms – and how much money that could be!

Our focus in Term 3 shifted to multiple smaller projects helping students make connections between our curriculum topics and the real world, involving podcasting, chance and probability, and some concrete measurement tasks connected to some of their favourite objects.

“We do lots of things in Creative Schools not just with maths. It’s very innovative.” (Student)

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How did we make the curriculum come alive?

We kicked off our “Influencer Millionaires” project by analysing how some real-life influencers were making their money, then set forth to emulate them. Students used linear equations to make predictions about how much money they could make by posting certain numbers of videos, and designed their own influencer avatars to suit their interests. These are teenagers who spend a lot of time watching TikTok or Instagram videos so it was great to connect their viewing habits to some mathematical equations.

During Term 3, one of our key learning areas was surface area and volume, so to transfer the curriculum to real life we asked the students to create their own projects to demonstrate their knowledge of calculating these. Students worked on measuring (and eating) cake, developing volume demonstrations in Minecraft, and figuring out the surface area of football fields. We also spent time on probability and students recorded podcasts discussing the chance of various events occurring, modelling the language of the curriculum.

“I’m one of those unusual people who loves maths, but I didn’t expect these students to, and I was right. The chance to apply a Creative Schools lens to Year 10 maths was both exciting and challenging. Above all, this project reminded me that finding connections between students’ interests and the curriculum can be one of the best ways to help students gain agency in their learning, and combining this with creative projects they can enjoy helps them immensely.” (Creative Practitioner)

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How did we make the 5 Habits of Learning come alive?

These students were not expecting to be creative during their Year 10 mathematics lessons, but after realising many of them loved to draw, we managed to incorporate colourful, creative expression into many aspects of our maths projects – this encouraged their imaginative skills. We also focused on getting them to collaborate in their groups, encouraging every member to get involved regardless of their skill level in relation to the curriculum. The other main habit of focus – possibly the most important one for this class – was persistence. While they would often be tempted to give up on a task, the creative parameters around a maths question helped them to persist, along with some friendly competition and rivalry between teams.

“We use our creative thinking more. Usually, we just study study study. It’s not so boring. It’s fun.” (Student)

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How did we activate student voice and learner agency?

Getting buy-in from Year 10 maths students into a new way of tackling their maths curriculum wasn’t easy, and simply giving them the freedom of learner agency wasn’t enough. Over the course of the project we found that a combination of connecting our projects clearly to the curriculum and then giving them the chance to contribute with their own ideas, shaping ideas to suit their own interests and pastimes, led to the most voice and engagement.

“I’m persistent. I’m just trying. Imaginative I need to practise more. But I’ve used my imagination in the maths poem and in this influencer project, so I do use my imagination I suppose.” (Student)

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WHAT WAS THE IMPACT?

Students:

From the initial weeks when most of the class were “too cool” for Creative Schools, we managed to turn most of them into happy participants in our range of activities. Some of the students were so reluctant to be involved with maths that they would refuse to enter the classroom but over time, we had successes with a number of these students. One student returned from school suspension to our session creating a podcast on the topic of chance and probability, and from the exercise of building a podcast studio within the classroom to devising their script, recording their chat and listening back after, he was on task for the entire lesson, something we had never seen before. For others, it was our range of alternative approaches to the curriculum, such as a competitive quiz to estimate the volume of various everyday items, that helped them to connect a formula to the real world.

Teacher: Although we started off with some grand plans and learnt along the way that we needed to keep changing these, Sarah embraced this and proved endlessly flexible in her approach, and her creative approach to idea generation kept improving as the weeks went by.

Creative: I was so excited to finally put my undergraduate maths degree to work in a school setting! The challenge of finding interesting ways to reinforce the maths curriculum with creative projects was exciting, as was learning every week about what worked and didn’t work with this group of students. I’ve come away from this project with a whole new raft of ways to work with teenagers, even reluctant ones.

School: Many of Sarah’s maths teacher colleagues were intrigued by what was taking place in our Creative Schools classroom, and many informal chats helped to get them to consider some alternative ideas for their own classes.

“I like doing Creative Schools. I’d rather do it this way than normal math. I usually hate maths. I can drop Maths next year but I want to do real estate, so I want to stick with it now.” (Student)

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Quotes

‘People from the class are more together. It helps us get to know each other more. I like it because I’m new at the school.” (Student)

“Being part of the Creative Schools program has been such a positive experience. My creative practitioner was an absolute joy to work with—knowledgeable, supportive, and a true embodiment of the five habits of learning, especially persistence! Choosing the Year 10 Pre-Essential class felt like a bit of a risk, as I knew it would come with challenges, but I believed they had the most to gain. While it wasn’t always smooth sailing, I’m confident that, despite the groans, the students genuinely enjoyed the experience and took something meaningful away from it.” - Sarah Dunis/Maths Teacher

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