Sports with Senior Students

When I was a Year 12 in high school, I struggled with calculus. Differentiation and integration were mechanical skills that I could do on paper with equations but I had no understanding of the meaning or application in the real world. It wasn't until we started learning about velocity and acceleration in physics that I made a slight link to why I had to be able to find f'(x) and the squiggly s dx of things. I only became more confident with the concept of differentiation and integration in university, though at that point the math I was faced with raced too far ahead. Today after studying sport science and working in biomechanics I still relate it to movement and speed. We actually do calculus subconsciously all the time to work out how fast and slow to move around the world and manipulate objects. It's bringing it to the surface, clearly defining it and putting it on paper that's difficult, but when you do that's when you are finally able to make observations and understand a problem.

My year 12 class has a few issues. Eating and cellphone use are only superficial problems compared to the lack of motivation, interest and confidence the students have in maths. Recently, in our staff meetings, we have been trying to identify "priority students". As I listed just about every student in my class, the thought in my head was "they are all in need of being prioritised, how do I focus on just a few?". The exercise however forced me to define the issues on paper (or on google docs because we are a digital school). This enabled me to see that I could group students into those with attendance issues, literacy issues or a lack of basic skills (some fell into multiple groups). Bringing these issues to the surface, I could more readily come up with plans of actions for different students' needs and hopefully be a better teacher for them.

Today my Year 12s had a double period of maths. I had just finished covering the five trigonometry skills they need for their NCEA internal. The thing about NCEA is that is doesn't allow you just to be able to do the maths, you have to apply it in context which forces you to do more than plug in numbers into formulae which is admittedly how I got through a lot of my maths in high school. So today I was about to ask my Year 12s to use their skills in context and solve some big, wordy problems. I was worried about how this would be received as I had some who had trouble with the words and others who had trouble with the maths but here I was asking them to do both.

Ready, set go.

We started with a warm up, "simple" skills such as putting sin and cos into the calculator. From this point on I became their coach and let them know that today we are going to get into the game of trigonometry. The skills we had covered in trainings so far would be useful to play the game. I likened the sine, cosine, arc and area rule to skills like dribbling, passing, running and shooting. In the game you use these to get the goal, there is no predefined moment when you have to dribble or shoot, you just do it when you think it's best and the opportunity arises for you to inch your way to victory. Though some of my students had missed quite a few "trainings", I was throwing them into the deep end, hoping that they will develop their skills and understanding of the rules along the way. The engagement was definitely there, students were even working as a team to help each other get the goal. With more time playing the game, they'll hopefully be ready for the big tournament in two weeks time.

Skills may help us win the match. But passion for the game keeps us playing it.