Leisure and tourism (other sources of ideas)
A collection of resources which provide ideas and inspiration for teaching mathematics in the context of leisure and tourism. The resources included in this collection require some adaptation to make them appropriate for the particular audience.
Travel and carbon footprints
In this challenge students are asked to produce a 10 minute presentation proposing sustainable travel plans for the journey from their school or home to two different event venues. One venue should be within the Greater London area and the other in any UK location.
Teams must show clearly how they arrived at their final travel plans. All proposals must be justified – these justifications should form the main part of the presentation. There is no set way of presenting the travel plans. However, it is important to present data and calculations clearly, and to find various ways to display findings. This includes the use of tables, charts and graphs.
Students should work in teams of 4-6 and the STEM Challenge is designed to take approximately 6-8 school weeks.
Budgeting and foreign exchange
This Core Maths resource contains teachers' notes, lesson plan and student handouts that explore budgeting and foreign exchange. The two topics can be combined into one large project or taught as two discrete tasks.
There is a Powerpoint presentation of the tasks for classroom use, including possible extension activities.
Budgeting requires students to plan a holiday or activity and prepare a detailed budget using Excel. The teachers' notes contain ideas for initial class discussion and what costs the chosen budget should include e.g. insurance. At least one of the chosen activities must be expressed in a foreign currency. Students need to research their chosen holiday, find the costs and make a presentation of their budget to the group.
Foreign exchange encourages students to investigate different rates of exchange of currencies. Student materials show a variety of different expenses for a round the world tour with the costs in local currencies. Students need to find a correct currency rate and convert each cost into GBP.
Split train tickets
This Core Maths activity covers some of the problem solving skills essential for the GCSE examination. In addition there are skills in calculations, reading and interpreting tables. The challenge is based on finding the cheapest train tickets for journeys with stopping stations, where one ticket can be replaced by split tickets.
The activity sheet shows the cost of tickets between Exeter and Birmingham and four stations in between. Students need to calculate the costs of the various split journeys in order to find the cheapest set of tickets to buy. There is a similar table of information for the return journeys. Students are challenged to explain how many different calculations would need to be done if there were n intermediate stations in the journey.
There are two different sets of teachers' notes. One set provides a suggested approach to the task, answers to the activity sheet and has links to other sources of information. The other set of teachers' notes gives an overview of the task and suggestions for possible extensions including use of a spreadsheet.
Leisure and Tourism
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