MathsClass

An outdoors activity is always a welcome change to a maths lesson.  To introduce rates, I take the class outdoors to measure their heart rate.

Start indoors, counting number of beats in a minute whilst sitting at their desks — best 1 minute of silence you will have in the day.

At my school, we head outdoors to a pergola.  When we get to the pergola, we again count the number of beats in a minute.

Finally, the students do something active — run across the oval, star jumps — then again count the number of beats in a minute.

All this can be recorded on the worksheet.  Back in the classroom, some calculations can be done to find beats per week, month and year.  You can also find, roughly, the amount of blood pumped by the heart in a year.

This introductory activity shows that rates compare different quantities (in this case heart beats and time).  By doing the calculations for per week, month and year; students convert rates.