Today in year 6 we were looking at averages – the mean, median, mode and range. While I was planning this lesson last week – I noticed a tweet highlighting a lesson on averages using the Wii from Robert Drummond the blog post set out how he planned on using the Wii and bowling to teach averages – it fitted the bill perfectly so I stole – sorry ‘magpied’ the idea for today!

I followed the lesson set out in the blog – I already have five groups in my maths groups so just spread one of the table onto the other four so that I had the four bowling teams.  The children had not idea that we would be using the Wii for maths. Instead we began with the words mean, median, mode and range on the IWB and I asked the four groups to talk on their tables as to what the words meant – about half of the class could remember the definitions which was a good start.

We then came to the conclusion that we would need some data – they had various ideas, shoe sizes, heights etc.  When I switched the view on the IWB to the WIi – there was an increase in the excitement level in the class! I explained that each group of 4 would be bowling and that they would need to write down the score – on their score sheets – you can see the one I used below:

After round 1, I paused the game – pressing the home button is a quick way to do this, and gave them a couple of minutes to work out the mean, median and mode. This was then shared with the class and then we proceeded with the game! This continued until we had completed all 10 rounds – working out the averages as we went.

It was a thrilling ending with one team winning the bowling by just one point! However as I had stated at the beginning of the lesson this was not the ‘true’ point of the lesson – it was the team who had worked out the averages correctly – that team earned themselves an extra 5 minutes playtime. While I worked this out – the children then wrote definitions for mode, median and mean in their books as well as commenting on if they enjoyed the lesson.

The comments included:

‘great way of learning – fun and enjoyable thanks’

‘if i get a question on averages in my sats i will just think of the Wii to remind me’

it was fun working in a group to bowl together and work together on our maths’

‘will you thank Mr Drummond for the idea miss – it was cool’

So thank you Robert for letting me and the class ‘magpie’ your idea – it was a great lesson and a great way for working out averages.