Maths Week England
November saw the return of another successful Maths Week England at Bishop’s Hatfield Girls’ School
November saw the return of another successful Maths Week England at Bishop’s Hatfield Girls’ School. Pupils from years 7 to 9 were tasked with researching famous Female Mathematicians and took a closer look at some of the most inspirational figures from recent times.
Year 7s enjoyed discovering how Ada Lovelace contributed to the earliest concepts of what we know as a modern computer (the ‘Cogwheel Calculating Machine’). They then participated in a codebreaking activity in which the girls used their analytical and Mathematical abilities to crack a code in order to solve the heinous hotel crime!
Katherine Johnson (otherwise known as ‘The Human Computer’) was the figurehead studied by the year 8s who found out how she was instrumental to NASA and performed much of the Mathematical analysis completely by hand to calculate the trajectories that led to the Apollo moon landing. Pupils then applied their ability to solve a series of problems themselves, enabling them to solve a mystery of their own!
In year 9 – pupils found out about the exciting architecture produced by Zaha Hadid (who is actually the namesake of one of the Bishop’s ‘houses’). They explored some of the features which make a city attractive, and even produced their own mini cities incorporating key characteristics such as ‘order and variety’. On top of all of these, two competitions were run in which students explored their own ‘famous mathematicians’ performing research, culminating in a poster which explained their chosen mathematicians’ discoveries. A huge congratulations to Maisie Isbecque (7Fr), Libby Porter (9Au) and Lillia Rustem (8Fr) who came 1st, 2nd and 3rd respectively and won both house points and a gift voucher. The second competition which was open to year 7s involved a fun logic-problem to see “Who Owned the Fish”. Well done to Gabrielle Kehagias who correctly identified the German as the owner of the aquatic creature.
