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Making maths fun

Algebra and arithmetic scare some children off the subject, and probability and Pythagoras deter a few more, but with sport, magic potions and paper darts a retired teacher promises he can make maths fun!

Roy Lindsell always felt that there were never enough questions in textbooks, so now he runs a business developing puzzles, games and other maths resources for secondary schools across the UK. “My overall aim is to make things easier for the teacher,” he says, “by making maths fun for the children, and relevant through things like sport.”

Roy’s resources include games he has developed such as ‘Olympiad Maths’, which turns the achievements of sporting heroes into maths calculations and conversions; ‘Think of a Number’, that reveals the unique, mathematical qualities of 1 to 100; and ‘Classic Puzzles’, ‘Four adventurers have to cross a rope bridge which will not take more than two people at a time and anyone that crosses must use a torch which only has 17 minutes left in its battery…’ You get the picture.

In 1989 Roy left his job as Deputy Head Teacher of a school in Coventry, after a spell of disillusionment. But when he found that the alternative he had resorted to - of running a shop in Whitchurch, Shropshire - didn’t make much money, he returned to education, this time as a straight maths teacher.

“If you have got energy and lots of ideas”, says the trim-looking Roy, now 60 and just back from a three-day orienteering week-end, “being a teacher is not enough.”

So Roy tried selling the materials he had developed for his own maths classes and, encouraged when orders started to come in, left teaching for a second time in 2002, to devote himself to what is now a growing business, Pinnacle Education.

With a new product nearly every term his materials have developed from the handful that he started with – for ‘lesson starters’, developing number skills, and tests and revision exercises - into the more complex puzzles that he offers today.

“Ever since a teenager I have been interested in puzzles,” he admits. “Some puzzles have a strange and magical element to their answers, and that always fascinates people - think of a number, double it, take away your birthday, you know the sort of thing – and others give children an ability to develop their logic, to think through and solve problems, and that’s valuable in lots of situations in everyday life.”

As well as new products - a poster about Andrew Wiles, Britain’s esteemed but little known mathematician, has become one of Roy’s bestsellers - the energetic teacher has moved forward using new technology. Rather than just selling hard copies of his materials, he can also now supply them on disc.

“Teachers can have a licence to print off however many copies they need, without the loss of colour that would result from photocopying,” Roy explains. “And they can project the examples, from disc, straight onto whiteboards.”

Meanwhile Roy’s partnership with a Head of Maths from Nottinghamshire, Chris du Feu, has developed a series of Sherlock Holmes-like investigations that can be used for the coursework that comprises 20% of GCSEs.

Experiments with paper darts introduce children to the principles of aerodynamics; football results are used to find a formula for the number of possible scores at half-time; and, nudging above GCSE level, a study of isoperimetric quotients reveals that a circle is the shape with the largest ratio of area to perimeter – which has defensive messages for military strategists, historians and biologists, says the investigation’s detailed teacher’s notes.

“Pinnacle’s resources are colourful and attractive, and great for stimulating thoughts and ideas,” says an enthusiastic Grant Whitaker, Head of Maths at Gayhurst School in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire.

Particularly popular has been Roy’s ‘Zendal Trilogy’, in which questions for 12-16 year olds are weaved into fantasy-come-adventure stories such as ‘Sorcerer’s Quest’, where solving a simultaneous equation is the only way to concoct a magic potion to free Princess Zendalene from the knights of the Dodecagon (12-sided) Table. Are you keeping up!?

“Children really enjoy the game and get a lot out of it,” says Jill Sherry, number two in the Maths Department at Queen Elizabeth School in Kirkby Lonsdale, Cumbria. “They learn a lot of skills such as problem solving, communicating with each other and writing up their solutions.”

Even Christmas features in Pinnacle Education’s expanding list of materials. Depending on their level, children can build a Christmas scene and calculate house areas and volumes, or, using bearings and Pythagoras, help Santa find a way through the dangerously thin ice. Like it or not, maths is all around us.

“If anyone has a favourite puzzle, please get in touch,” says Roy. “But don’t send me the answer - that spoils the fun!”


Pinnacle Education. Tel. 01948 664890 www.pinnacleeducation.co.uk

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