The Living Graph

On Friday 6th January, the B-Block rather unusually assembled in Pears’ School for their mathematics lesson. The lesson was an introduction to straight line graphs and each pupil become a pair of coordinates on a large rectangular grid.



Pupils responded to instructions like ‘stand up if your x coordinate plus your y coordinate equals 10. This allowed them to see the line x + y =10 as a line of pupils across Pears’ School. They were able to explore the effect of the gradient and y-intercept on the geometry of the line simply by standing up when required. Indeed, it was possible to construct mathematical Mexican waves simply by varying parameters in the equations of lines. Mr Goodhead was very pleased with the way the whole year group took to the tasks and listened carefully to the instructions given. Hopefully the next time they plot a straight line in a mathematics lesson they will remember what it is like to actually be part of a living line!