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Tenix Questacon Maths Squad

What is the Tenix Questacon Maths Squad?

The Tenix Questacon Maths Squad is an outreach program of Questacon – The National Science and Technology Centre, which is based in Canberra, and travels out to schools. The Maths Squad aims to inform and inspire students and teachers about Maths. As with other national programs of Questacon, the Maths Squad shows people how science and technology and in this case, mathematics, play an important role in people's everyday lives.

Making Maths Exciting and Relevant

The Maths Squad uses interactive, hands-on mathematical tasks and lively presentations to inspire students to take a positive interest in mathematics. With challenging, colourful puzzles and engaging narrative, the Maths Squad guides students to discovering the important role that maths plays in our everyday lives.The Maths Squad also offers professional development workshops for teachers.

This program makes almost 500 puzzle-based activities accessible to students and aims to highlight the broad and narrative nature of maths and its essential and pervasive range of applications.

The puzzles and activities are fun and exciting for anyone aged eight to eighty.

History of the Maths Squad

The Maths Squad evolved from a program previously known as the Questacon Maths Centre.

The highly successful ACT Maths Centre was created with funding from a Commonwealth Schools Commissions Innovations Grant in 1976. Located in a classroom in Campbell Primary School, the ACT Maths Centre popularised maths for over a decade. It served thousands of school children each year and was often booked out a year in advance. The ACT Maths Centre was closed in 1990 and the materials transferred to Questacon which converted it into a portable program to make this creative approach accessible to the rest of Australia.

Location

The Maths Squad is available to schools and community groups during each school term. Each term the Maths Squad will travel to different locations in various parts of the country.

The Puzzles – exciting for students and adults

A feature of the Maths Squad programs are puzzles. Each one is like a small small game, has simple instructions (but often not a simple answer!) and takes about 5 to 15 minutes to solve. The puzzles generate a high level of excitement and enthusiasm. One session accommodates 30 students and there are usually three sessions per day. There are tasks suitable for all ability levels and cover most areas of the mathematics curriculum.

For Teachers

In addition to sessions for students, hands-on mathematics teacher workshops are run for teachers. Workshops are designed to share some of the Maths Squad's ideas and approaches with local teachers so that the enthusiasm and excitement for maths and the materials produced in these workshops are taken back to schools by the teachers for future use in their schools.

How Does it Operate?

The Maths Squad is run by Questacon staff with extensive experience in making maths interesting. The staff visit schools and take a unique set of maths puzzles with them.

Session length and content varies according to the group age and number. A typical session includes an interesting introduction followed by an opportunity for students to work in groups of 2 or 3. They are given an activity to suit their age/ability from the 500 puzzles available. The activities are grouped into the curriculum bands: Space, Number, Measurement, Chance and Data and to a lesser extent Algebra. There are also many 'logic' puzzles and activities. Over a one hour session most students complete 6 to 10 activities. A session concludes with an exciting narrative or informative talk about maths.

Where Will it Operate?

The Maths Squad is currently based at Questacon in Canberra. The Maths Squad travels to regional, remote and rural areas of Australia.

For more information about the Maths Squad phone 1800 889 995, fax 1800 641 171 or e-mail outreach@questacon.edu.au.