***Teach The Teacher Tuesday***

With Easter concluding Term 1, no doubt there have been some Easter themed activities conducted, at least in the primary classrooms!

If you’re looking for some additional Easter themed resources, check out these Easter countdown timers. There are two timers to chose from: Racing Easter Eggs or Easter Bunny Race.

What makes these timers great is that they also lend themselves to additional Mathematics activities. This is because if you watch a few timers in a row, you’ll notice that a different egg/bunny will win each race. This lends nicely to Mathematics activities that focus on probability and statistics. 

 Depending on the year level you could:

  1. Have students conduct a few ‘races’ themselves. After some time simply ask students ‘What do you notice?’. Student may notice that in each race a different egg/bunny will win.

  2. Using this observation, students could conduct mini cheer squads. After each race watched as a class, students could choose which egg/ bunny to barrack for. Is any student brave enough to cheer in the winning egg/bunny for the following race? Why/why not? 

  3. Students could graph the winning eggs/ bunnies on a chart. As a class you could determine how many trials should be conducted. Does each bunny/ egg have the same chance of winning?

  4. Students could use probability language such as ‘likely’ to describe the chances of a particular egg/bunny of winning.

  5. Determine the probability of an egg/bunny winning. For the first race, each has a 1 in 4 chance of winning, however how are the egg/bunnies chances changed after each race? 

  6. Students could develop their own egg/bunny races. They could also explore how the chances would change by adding more or less bunnies/eggs.

This simple low-preparation activity has many open ended possibilities. To explore which activities are relevant, or how they can be adapted to the year level you are teaching, visit the Probability and Statictics scope and sequence.

Can you think of any more activities that would match these timers? Write them in the comments below. 

The Teaching Initiative PTY LTD