St Mary's School Calne

St Margaret's Maths Trail

On Wednesday 4th June, eighteen children from St Margaret’s Preparatory School joined with two St Margaret’s staff and two St Mary’s staff in investigating the numbers, shapes and angles that were to be found between their own playground and the far reaches of St Mary’s site in the St Margaret’s Year 5 Maths Trail. 

Although the children were already familiar with St Mary’s School as they visit regularly for Science, Games and, most importantly, lunch, there were many features of the buildings that they had not noticed before.  Looking at familiar buildings with fresh eyes, they were able to identify S. Prisca and S. Cæcelia; find the angle of elevation of Gibbins; interpret dates given in Roman Numerals; tell the time using the sundial; judge distances using their own pace length; find a decagon, various types of triangle and even a few trapezia; and discover how many degrees were turned through in a spiral staircase.  They were able to apply much that they had learned in their own classrooms and they all discovered the importance of reading questions carefully.  After all the running around on the trail, the children finished off their afternoon with a well-deserved tea of cakes and squash.

Following their afternoon in the sunshine, the pupils will work through a series of questions based on the data they harvested.  Exercises involving calculations of means, medians and modes and constructing time-lines and scale drawings and will allow them to re-live their afternoon and will show them that Mathematics is truly all around us.