GAIM Activities: Investigations
GAIM Activities are open-ended tasks where achievements in using and applying mathematics can be assessed alongside content. In the investigations students explore pure mathematics.
GAIM provides teachers with 80 Activities (40 Investigations and 40 Practical Problems) as a resource for teaching and assessment. These are open-ended tasks designed to encourage students to use, apply and develop mathematical knowledge, skills and understanding and to integrate these in order to make decisions and draw conclusions.
The activities are suitable for a wide attainment range and can be used with whole classes, with small groups of students, or with individuals. A balanced set of activities, together with extended pieces of work, satisfies the assessment of National Curriculum Attainment Target One. These activities also enable teachers to credit student achievement in relation to other attainment targets by looking at the mathematical content in the work.
Investigations
Investigations involve students in exploring the pure aspects of mathematics. They provide the opportunity for students to develop their own systems for generating results and to identify, express and justify any patterns they obtain.
Examples include:
• Crooked Stars - Investigating tesselation patterns on a grid and considering reflections, rotations, translations, and size of different polygon shapes.
• Change - Investigating the number of ways of giving change for different sums of money.
• Outside in - Investigating perimeters and areas of polygons on a grid leading to the notion of locus and/or the symbolisation of relationships.
• Co-primes - Investigating factors and prime numbers
HEALTH and SAFETY
Any use of a resource that includes a practical activity must include a risk assessment. Please note that collections may contain ARCHIVE resources, which were developed at a much earlier date. Since that time there have been significant changes in the rules and guidance affecting laboratory practical work. Further information is provided in our Health and Safety guidance.
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Resource by: Nelson Thornes
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- Graded Assessment in Mathematics (GAIM)
- GAIM Activities: Investigations
Comments
Great resource.
Obviously I am biased because I was involved in the GAIM project from 1984 to 1989, but the investigations and the practical problem solving activities provided were tested in literally hundreds of classrooms, and in my experience, work really well.