Teaching With Technology: Up, Up and Away With Parachutes in Primary Mathematics

Abstract

In a teacher education institution just north of Sydney, a lecturer asked her students about their most vivid memories of learning about mathematics in their primary school years. By far, the most easily recalled positive experiences of mathematics involved some form of physical activity or the use of hands-on resources: One day the teacher organised for us to have a pizza party. The pizzas were divided into even pieces and we learned about fractions. I loved the way my teacher got us to use the things she found around her house in the classroom - . She'd bring them into our class and we'd use them in maths activities. We did cooking in our primary school class. I'm not sure if it was meant to be a maths lesson or not but we learned how to measure, how to cut up food into parts and how to estimate amounts. We did maths activities with parachutes. I really enjoyed that. We were all running around, laughing, counting and just doing maths.