Maths - in the library

[Joan McKay <Joan.McKay@CS.ANU.EDU.AU>]

Hi LM_Netters,
        I am a teacher librarian in a school in Canberra, Australia.
A maths teacher and I have just run a very successful cooperatively
planned and taught project with her year 7 maths class in the library,
using current Heinemann atlases, computers for tables (word processing
and spreadsheets) and pie and bar charts (we use Claris Works for
Windows).  The students needed some knowledge of tables, charts and
percentage.  They were also required to compare and make assumptions
about the charts, drawing on their knowledge of other countries and
Australia. The students chose 1 of 3 assignments.  I will summarize
them below so that they can be adapted to other school environments
by any teacher librarians who have noticed maths classes approaching
units of work on tables and charts.

(1) Choose 10 countries in the world.  Mark and label each country
on a map of the world.  Find the life expectancy and infant mortality
for each country (using statistical info. in atlas).  Display info.
in a table and make charts.  Use your knowledge of the countries to
explain any pattern showing up in the charts.

(2) As in (1) but finding area and population.  Calculate the
population density for each country.  Explain any factors
controlling the population density.

(3) Find the area and population for each Australian state and territory.
Display results in a table and make 2 pie charts to display the
percentages of land area and the percentages of population.  Use
your knowledge of geography of each state/territory to compare its
proportion of population with its area.

Hoping this can be useful  -  Joan McKay