Beaches without sea spread all over

Europe!

In order to help the mayor, what information do you

need?

I would like toturn our town centre

into a beach. Can you estimate roughly

how much it will cost?

We would like sand, palm trees, deck

chairs, buckets and spades, a paddling pool and a Punch and Judy show.

City Beaches

Sandcity Council’s Information

Sandcity Council’s Shopping List

100 palm trees

250 deck chairs

1 Punch and Judy show

They also need lots of sand!!Please estimate how much Sandcity will need to cover, at a

depth of 20cm, an area half the size of their town centre square.

Dimensions of the town centre square: 100m by 50m

75 bucket and spade sets

1 paddling pool

What else do you think they might need to make an

exciting beach?

Up2d8 mathsTeacher’s guideSummer, such as it was, is almost over but why not keep it in your thoughts since September, for the last few years anyway, has had better weather than July and August? This issue of Up2d8 focuses on the story of some land-bound towns and cities that have been known to make beaches for the locals to visit as they shop! The beaches have palm trees, deckchairs, Punch and Judy shows and such like. This spread offers opportunities for work on estimation, area, money and measures as well as using and applying, thinking skills and practical mathematics activities.

1st spread: City Beaches

● Tell the children that beaches have been made in various towns and cities across theUK and Europe that are nowhere near the sea. Birmingham, Bristol, Nottingham and Paris are four of them. Locate these on the map and find their distances from the nearest coastline and also from your school. You could measure on maps using string and then convert according to the scale. You could take the opportunity to convert between kilometres and miles.

● Give the children the opportunity to search the internet to find examples of city or town centre beaches and ask them to make notes of what the places they might find used

for their beaches.You might find these links helpful:

Times OnlineLuxurytaStudent TravelRudi

● Establish that they have not been given enough information to help Sandcity Council work out how much it will cost to make the beach and lead a discussion on what else they need to know in order to find out e.g. numbers of deckchairs and palm trees, cost of each item, how much sand they will need which will depend on the depth required

and the area of the space to be covered.

… continued on the next slide

1st spread: City beaches, continued…

● Discuss what it means to make an estimate. Give practical examples like estimating circles drawn on a piece of paper, counters in a pile on the table. You could ask the children to make an estimate, then circle the circles or count the counters in groups of 10, 5 and 2 and half way through readjust their estimate if they think they need to.

● Extend the estimating to amounts of water in different containers and weight of sand in tubs. Once they have estimated they should check by actually measuring the water and weighing the sand. This would be a good opportunity to rehearse units of weight and equivalences, looking at imperial and metric as appropriate. Have high expectations of the younger children, particularly those in Year 1, they are quite able to estimate and measure to the nearest 100ml or 100g if given the chance. If they can’t it doesn’t

matter, but it is always good practice to give them the opportunity.

● When estimating weights of sand in tubs also estimate the number of small cups or similar, it would take to fill the tubs with sand. Lead this into a discussion of how they might estimate the sand wanted for the beach – would tubs or containers be good or should they estimate using weight? What would be the best way to buy large amounts

of sand? What units of weight should they use?

● Tell the children that around 2 000 tons of sand was brought by barge to create the beach in Paris and ask them to convert that amount into kilograms and estimate

whether it would fill the classroom.

2nd spread: Sandcity’s Shopping List

● Focus on the numbers of palm trees, deck chairs and bucket and spade sets. The younger children could plot these on a number line and explore the place value of each number.

● Make up amounts for the cost of each item mentioned above appropriate to the age of your children. For younger children make the amounts whole numbers of pounds as this is more realistic than pence. This provides a good opportunity to rehearse and develop teaching on multiplication using mental calculation, informal written methods or calculators.

● Find the total cost of all the items on Sandcity’s shopping list apart from the sand.

● You could encourage the children to look for real prices for the items on the internet and work out the costs using those.

● Discuss how the dimensions given will help them work out the amount of sand that is needed. This could lead into a lesson on area. They could use square or plain paper, scale the measurements down by halving and turning them into centimetres and draw the town centre square and then shade the area for the beach, deciding for themselves where to position it.

● Discuss ways of finding out how much sand Sandcity Council will need. For older children this could lead into a lesson on finding the volume. Begin by finding the volume of small containers and build on that.

● Using scaled down measurements, they could practically measure the amount of sand needed and then multiply up to find the actual amounts.

… continued on the next slide

2nd spread: Sandcity’s Shopping List. continued…

● Give a price per kilogram and ask the children to calculate the cost of the sand needed and then add to the amount for the other items to find the total amount of money Sandcity Council would need.

● Then there is always the amount of money that they would have to pay people to make the beach. You could discuss how many labourers would be needed and how many days to pay them for. Make up a price per hour and calculate that cost and add to the other total from above.

● Discuss what other things would be good to have on a town centre beach. You could use this as an opportunity for a data handling activity by making a tally and then showing the results in a bar chart, pictogram or Venn diagram.

● Should there be organised sports such as volley ball or beach football or should it just be a place where busy shoppers can relax? Ask for the children’s ideas on this.

● You could ask the children to write a proposal, setting out all the costs and drawing plans of how they think the beach should look and also suggestions for what things to make available for the visitors to use.

● Imagine people like shade. If each palm tree can shade 4 deck chairs, how many palm trees are needed to provide enough shade?

● You could make a Carroll diagram with one or two criteria. As chosen by the children e.g. to use in the sand/not to use in the sand and to use in the water/ not to use in the water.

● With older, more able children you could calculate how much sand is needed for specific areas using this calculator tool. LINK

… continued on the next slide

2nd spread: Sandcity’s Shopping List. continued…

● Ask the children to find the total cost of the sand needed for the beach in Paris if it was bought for £5.99 per 25kg bag.

● The children could design a beach for their own town centre. Where would be a good place to build it? Measure the area and carry out the calculations for sand etc as above.

● Alternatively, choose an area of the playground. What would be needed to turn that into a beach? What would be the cost? Could this realistically be raised?