Maths students have been really embracing Flair Week, taking part in the myriad activities happening in lessons.

Student leaders prepared a set of maths puzzles for teachers to use in class and attended the start of the staff meeting to promote their initiative. Students have enjoyed working on these puzzles, as well as receiving certificates for their great efforts.

Here is one example of the puzzles:

1. Doubling a positive number always makes it larger.
2. Squaring a positive number always makes it larger.
3. Taking the positive square root of a positive number always makes it smaller.

Which statements are true?

We are currently running a Mathletics competition for Year 7 and 8 students, with the leaderboard displayed by teachers in their lessons.

Students have done an investigation into “The Game of Life” a Maths algorithm which has connections with cellular automata. They then watched a clip of a flock of starlings producing beautiful patterns as they moved, and then explored the simple rules each follow in order to produce these patterns.

Students will also hear of the contributions of Female Mathematicians, watching videos and hearing accounts of mathematicians such as Maryam Mirzakhani and Sophie Germain.

Students have also been watching numberphile, a Maths youtube site which has lots of interesting investigations and presentations. Students have then produced some wonderful posters and proudly received their “You’ve got Flair Certificates”!