When West Walker Primary School was invited to a living history day at St Nicholas Cathedral, Helen Wood-Mitchell, year 3 class teacher, decided to use the visit to show her students that maths is everywhere.
Stained glass window found in St Nicholas Cathedral, Newcastle upon Tyne © Leo Reynolds (flickr.com/lwr/)
Helen took this opportunity to put her student’s maths skills into practice in the real world. The whole class organised the visit from working out travel arrangements using bus timetables, surveying local traffic, working out the cost of the visit, to recording their walking time.
It proved to be a great way to engage students and build up anticipation for the visit. But it also made Helen’s planning and preparations that much easier! Helen commented, ‘I wanted them to experience mathematics in a true-to-life, not a contrived context and take their mathematical learning out of the class text books and into the real world.’ (For a full activity break down visit the learning maths outside the classroom website).
A cross-curricula adventure
Once outside the cathedral, the children were excited to discover shapes and symmetry in the building structure and stained glass windows. They brushed up their number skills using a number line to work out how long ago different parts of the cathedral were built and how old people in the graveyard were when they died.
Inside the building, the focus was on RE and history, making it a truly cross-curricular experience. The class met ‘St Nicholas’, to whom the cathedral is dedicated, and heard his story. Actors dressed as local people from different periods of the cathedral’s history told the children what life was like at the time.
Learning from real life
So what inspired Helen to take her class to the cathedral? West Walker Primary School prides itself on the opportunities it provides for learning outside the classroom. Based in a deprived area, the children don’t often leave the confines of their immediate streets, so the school takes every opportunity to introduce them to new places and experiences.
The value of this is reinforced by the Learning Outside the Classroom manifesto which emphasises the importance for students to encounter real life, hands-on learning experiences where they can see, hear, touch and explore the world around them.
‘It brings learning to life for the children,’ says Helen. ‘The kids are switched on when they go out of school, they’re excited and interested in everything that is going on around them. They loved being inside the cathedral, it had a really calming effect on them.’
Looking down the aisle towards the alter: St Nicholas Cathedral © Michael Denholm
After their class visit to St Nicholas Cathedral, one of Helen’s year 3 students commented, ‘maths is really fun – it’s changed how I think now!’ Helen really noticed this change in the classroom and said, ‘when they came back they said they looked at things differently, they saw patterns, symmetry and shape everywhere.’
‘Cathedrals are places of discovery’, says Canon Robert Gage of St Nicholas Cathedral. ‘Just getting to know the building is a wonderful adventure, which can encompass worship, theology, music, building techniques, the visual arts, and social and political history.‘
Four reasons why you should take your class to a sacred space
- Sacred spaces of all kinds can provide inspiring learning opportunities for all learners.
- Almost every school has a local church, mosque, synagogue, temple or peace garden within easy reach.
- There are 14,500 places of worship in England listed for their special architectural or historical interest.
- Visits are usually low-cost and can help create community cohesion as well as providing a wealth of curriculum learning opportunities.
Susanna Ainsworth, a specialist in the educational use of church buildings, says that as well as being a vital part of our children’s cultural, social, religious and artistic heritage, sacred spaces are rich in their capacity for stimulating awe and wonder and offer the potential for breaking down barriers and heightening mutual respect between people of different faiths and those of none.
Maths in sacred spaces
Here are a few ideas to get you thinking about what maths learning opportunities are available in sacred spaces:
- Shape and symmetry, structural and decorative (eg churches built in the shape of a cross; geometric shapes of Hindu mandirs; rotational symmetry in the Star of David and rose windows)
- Pattern (eg in tiling and calligraphy in mosques)
- Numerical skills (working out dates, estimating measurements)
- Ratios, proportions and scale (for recording on site and model-making).
Resources to get you started
Find: a sacred space near you (over 80 listed England-wide)
Places of worship across the UK - covering Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism.
Extremely handy resource – Guidance on parental objections to visiting places of worship
A few examples…
St Alban’s Abbey – great maths trail and many other educational programmes
Dhammakaya Centre for Buddhist Meditation, Woking
Shri Guru Nanak Prakash Singh Sabha Gurdwara, Bristol
Bevis Marks Synagogue, London
Jain Centre, Leicester
