Mad Maths
Date: Monday 20th April, time: 11-11.45am
If you want to join the lesson, contact charlie@classicsforall.org.uk for the Zoom code.
Materials you’ll need
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- Greek alphabet sheet (if you don’t have your copy from the last session)(download here: https://maximumclassics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/mg-greek-alphabet.pdf)
- worksheet printout (download here: https://maximumclassics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/mg3-transliteration.pdf)
- triangle experiment worksheet (download here: https://maximumclassics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/mg2-constellations.pdf)
- pencil, rubber, paper (3 sheets), coloured felt tips or crayons, paper glue (e.g. pritt stick), ruler (or something with a straight edge), scissors
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Session structure
Part 1 – introduction & hellos
Our mascot for this lesson is the Pythagoras, a Greek philosopher whose discoveries about geometry and maths we still use today. He found triangles especially interesting, which is why he’s got one on his tunic.
As usual, we’ll start our session by greeting each other with a big ‘khairete!’
Part 2 – Warm up: Greek alphabet slam
To recap on last week’s learning, you’ll see some Greek letters on the screen. Using your alphabet sheets (or not, if you’re super-ambitious!), type the corresponding English letter into the chat box. Then we’ll level up: can you write on a sheet of paper the Greek alphabet equivalent of the English letter you see?
Part 3 – Quiz: Greek numbers
Because they made a lot of interesting mathematical discoveries, English gets a lot of number words from the Ancient Greeks. Using some English word clues, let’s try to match the right Greek word to its number.
Part 4 – Worksheet: transliterate into Greek
Here are some Ancient Greek maths words. Can you think of any English words that come from them? Once you’ve found some related English words, you can practice transliterating (i.e. writing the Greek words with Greek letters). You’ll have ten minutes to go through your worksheet. You can work on your own or with a partner (Mum/Dad/brother/sister). Do the easy ones first, and do as many as you can. If you have any questions or need any help, type in the chat box. After ten minutes, we’ll go through the answers.
Part 5 – Team Experiment: Angles in a triangle
Here’s a simple experiment to demonstrate one of the properties of triangles (reportedly) discovered by Pythagoras. Let’s see if we all get the same result!
After-session activities & links
Prove Pythagoras’ Theorem: https://maximumclassics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/mg3-pyth-theorem.pdf
Watch Horrible Histories tell the tale of Pythagoras’ Stupid Death: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBqEpC-dHqk
Discover more about Pythagoras: https://kids.kiddle.co/Pythagoras
Session rules
- 🤐 Stay on mute! Everyone needs to be on mute, otherwise things could get very noisy! If you want to answer a question, type in the text box.
- 💻 Be patient! If the lesson’s Internet connection goes down, I will switch to another network. This may take a couple of minutes but the Zoom room will stay open.
- 📝Be prepared! Have all the materials you’ll need (listed above) ready.
- 🤓Have fun! Ancient Greece is awesome (but I may be slightly biased).
Note on video recording
I’ll be recording the session for training and monitoring purposes. Classics For All, who fund and sponsor this online course, has also had requests from a small number of partner schools to have access to the video to support their home learning programme. Consequently, the recording of the session will be distributed to a few selected CfA partner schools.