Sally Pearson and the 100m Hurdles Gold Medal

What are those numbers?

To celebrate Sally Pearson’s great win in the 100m hurdles today, the teachers planned a special welcome. When the kids came in to the building this morning we had the following numbers written on the white board:

100

 85

105

1235

868

13

10

 Sally - an Australian hero!

“All these numbers relate to the 100m hurdles,” we told the kids

No other information was provided. Time for the kids to start thinking.

Ah! Now some lights start flicking on.

“100 is the 100m for the race!”

“And 1235 is the time Sally ran – 12.35 seconds!”

"And there's 10 hurdles in the race."

After some prompting we got to the last numbers:

13m from the start line to the first hurdle.

Each hurdle is 8.5m apart.

It's 10.5m from the last hurdle to the finish line.

And the hurdles are 83.8cm high. (Why the crazy height? Well, it used to be 2' 9" in the imperial system)

...and in this discussion we covered such mathematical concepts as:

- decimal points

- need to use correct units of measurement

- fractions

- addition of decimals

- length, time and speed

A great conversation to start the day!

So we got out some till paper (long rolls of paper from an old cash register) and held it at 83.8cm so the kids could have a go at a hurdle.

Learning an Old Game - Fly!

As a bit of fun, we learnt a an old game that I used to play at school called "Fly".

Here's the rules:

• You have seven sticks and you place them about a foot apart. 
• Then all the kids stand in a line and run through putting one foot in between each stick. 
• The last person in the line is the 'Fly", they run through and then at the last stick they jump as far as they like, then they pick a stick to be moved to the spot where they landed. 
• Eventually the spacings get bigger and bigger and harder and harder. A person gets out when they put more than one foot in between two sticks (ie they don't make the jump) or miss one. 
• When 'Fly' gets out, the second last jumper becomes the new 'Fly'