Shio and Tim, best friends

1. ‘I’m going to keep my bedroom tidy!’ ‘I’m going to always do my best at school!’ New Year’s resolutions – do you make them? ‘I’m going to improve my handwriting!’ Bet you won’t!! I don’t make them, no one ever keeps them. They’re silly! My New Year’s resolution is to learn my times tables! ‘I’m going to unload the dishwasher every day!’ ‘I’m going to get fitter!’ ‘I’m going to stop eating chocolate!’ Shio and Tim, best friends

2. China Scotland England Greece Russia Wales US Germany India Australia Ecuador France Spain Norway South Africa

3. On which day is your birthday this year? When are the school holidays? When is Christmas Day? On which of these dates will we be at school?

4. New Year, New Start? Teacher’s guide 2011 is just around the corner – it doesn’t seem long ago that we saw 2010 in! We thought this would be a good annual event to explore in this issue of It’s in the News! Even though the schools weren’t open over this time, it could be a good resource to use to the start the first term of the New Year. There are links to geography and history. These slides give opportunities for work on a variety of mathematical concepts including time, data handling and probability. … continued on the next slide

5. … continued Before you use the slides you might find it helpful to look at the following websites for further information: Time and Date count down to the new year in seconds, minutes, hours and days. New Year Festival information about new year celebrations all around the world. Wikipedia new year’s resolutions. New Years History history of new year. Ezinearticles history of new year’s resolutions.

6. 1st slide: New Year, New Start ● Ask the children to tell you if they celebrated the new year. Make list to show the things that they did. You could have two lists, one to show New Year’s Eve and one for New Year’s Day. These lists could then be displayed as pictograms, bar or pie charts. ● You could explore the number 2011. What are its factors? You could use this as an opportunity to look into the rules of divisibility. What are its factors, its digit total? Find different ways to partition it and to make it which involve the four operations and fractions, decimals and percentages. ● You could ask the children to make as many different numbers as they can in a minute or two from the digits in 2011, e.g. 2 101, 2 110, 4 (2 + 1 + 1 + 0), 0 (2 x 1 x 1 x 0), ½ 1(1 ÷ 2) + 0. ● Ask the children if they know what a New Year’s resolution is. Discuss the comments of the two children. Which one do they agree with? You could display what your children say in a Carroll diagram with the criteria agree/not agree or a two-circled Venn diagram with those that aren’t sure in the middle. ● Look at the New Year’s resolutions on the slide. Have the children ever made any of these? You could make a tally to show what they say and then ask them to show the tally as a pictogram, bar or pie chart. ● Popular resolutions include: lose weight, exercise more, stop smoking, save money, get out of debt, get a better job, improve at school, become more organised, be less grumpy, volunteer to help others. You could discuss these, asking the children if they know of anyone who has made any of these as a resolution and if they succeeded. You could ask them to think about whether they should make any of them themselves and maybe which one they think you should make! They could design and carry out a survey by making a questionnaire or table to show what the children in the class or school think using tallying to record the data. …continued on the next slide

7. 1st slide: New Year, New Start continued… ● Recent research has shown that 52% of those that made resolutions were confident of success but only 12% actually succeeded. Men achieved their goal 22% more often when they engaged in goal setting, e.g. small measurable steps like losing a pound a week instead of simply losing weight. Women succeeded 10% more when they made their goals public and got support from their friends. You could use these research facts to do some work on percentages, fractions, ratio and proportion. ● You could do some work on probability, placing different resolutions on different parts of a line with a probability scale that could include the words certain, likely, not likely, uncertain ● You could talk about the history of New Year’s resolutions. It goes back to 153BC. You could plot this time on a number line along with other significant dates that you might have looked at during a previous history project and also years that are significant to the children. You could use this as an opportunity to reinforce finding differences by counting on from different dates to a variety of others. How long have New Year’s resolutions been with us? It started when the mythical god Janus became the ancient symbol for resolutions. The Romans named the first month of their year after him. He had two faces one on the front of his head and one on the back. The Romans imagined that on midnight on New Year’s Eve he looked back at the old year and forward to the new. You could ask the children to research Janus, find a picture of what he looked like and then make a two-sided mask of his face. This could lead to some work on symmetry, reflection and translation. They could make alternative masks decorated in symmetrical patterns. You could ask them to make circular face masks which could lead into constructing circles through a given length of radius. …continued on the next slide

8. 1st slide: New Year, New Start continued… ● You could tell them about the history of the celebration of the New Year. It is the oldest of all holidays and was apparently first celebrated in ancient Babylon about 4 000 years ago. They celebrated their new year on what is now March 23rd. Their celebration lasted for 11 days. You could use this information to explore calendars asking questions such as what day is March 23rd on this year, how many days from New Year’s Day to March 23rd, what is that in weeks, hours, seconds? Before 153BC the Romans celebrated on 25th March. In 153BC, because different emperors tampered with the calendar, the Roman senate declared January 1st to be New Year’s Day. This meant that to get the calendar synchronised to the sun, the previous year had to go on for 445 days! How many months or weeks is this? ● You could mention the Chinese New Year which is celebrated some time between January 17th and February 19th There are 15 days of celebrations which culminate at the time of the new moon. What possible days will these cover? If you have a calendar which shows the new moon with a symbol, the children could find out when the next Chinese New Year starts and finishes.

9. 2nd slide: New Year around the World ● You could spend some time focussing on how the New Year is celebrated around the world. Ask the children to identify the countries labelled on the slide. For each one ask them questions such as which countries are on its borders, which ocean is it close to/next to (if appropriate)? Ask the children if they have ever visited any of these countries. You could make a tally of this information and then ask them to show it in pictograms, bar and pie charts. You could use the scale to explore distances from one to the other and to find out how far they are away from your region in the UK. ● You could ask pairs of children to take a country each and make a fact file to show mathematical information about each one, e.g. population, currency, size, temperatures and rainfall and currency. You could then carry on to explore mean, mode, median and range of the temperatures and rainfall and explore currency conversions. ● Explore the flags of each of the countries looking for symmetry, repeating patterns and shapes. They could make copies of these involving measuring and thinking about the fractions or proportions of the different parts. ● Take each country in turn and share some of their traditions for new year bringing out any mathematics opportunities that you can think of. On New Year’s Eve: ● Ecuador, each member of the family donates a piece of clothing such as a shirt, trousers, shoes, or hat. The family then makes a straw man to represent the old year by sewing the clothes together and stuffing them with straw. A member of the family writes out a last will and testament naming all the faults of each family member. At the stroke of midnight, the will is read, the straw man is burned and all the listed faults disappear. …continued on the next slide

10. 2nd slide: New Year around the World continued… On New Year’s Eve: ● One of the most famous traditions in the United States is only a little over 100 years old. It is the dropping of the New Year ball in Times Square, New York City, at 11:59 pm. Thousands gather to watch the ball make its one-minute descent, arriving exactly at midnight. This tradition began in 1907. The original ball was made of iron and wood; the current ball is made of Waterford Crystal, weighs 1 070 pounds and is six feet in diameter. On New Year’s Day: ● India: friends and family give each other gifts, flowers and greetings cards ● France: famous New Year parade which begins on 31 December in Chantilly and finishes on 1 January under the Eiffel Tower ● Germany: fortune-telling by dropping molten led into cold water to predict the future of people from whatever shape it makes e.g. if heart- or ring-shaped, a wedding, ship - a journey, pig meant plenty of food ● Norway: Norwegians make rice pudding and hide one whole almond. Guaranteed wealth goes to the person whose serving has the almond ● US: meet with family and friends, watch famous Tournament of Roses parade and games of football, e.g. the Orange Bowl ● South Africa: music, songs, dance, lavish dinners and fireworks ● Scotland: children get up early and sing traditional songs, and are given coins, pies, apples and sweets. Special food is eaten including currant loaf and oatcakes ● England: first-footing – the first male visitor to the house brings good luck, he brings money, bread or coal ● Russia: starts on 31 December and continue to 13 January. More of a winter holiday, there is fortune-telling ● Spain: when the clock strikes midnight they eat a grape for each of the 12 strikes to bring good luck for the next 12 months …continued on the next slide

11. 2nd slide: New Year around the Worldcontinued… ● Australia: this is a family and friends day when they do things together, e.g. picnics, camping, surfing and other water sports ● Greece: special bread is made with a coin buried in the dough. The first slice is for the Christ-child, the second for the father of the house and the third for the house. If the coin is in the third slice, spring will come early ● Wales: on first stroke of midnight the back door is opened and then shut to release the old year and lock out its bad luck, on 12th stroke the front door is opened and the New Year is welcomed with all its luck ● You could ask the children to research these in more depth and find any mathematical data to record on a table. For example they could find the recipe for Scottish oatcakes and possibly make them. ● You could also ask the children to plan a New Year’s Day celebration. Once they have their ideas, maybe using some of those above, they could find out how much it would cost to do this for your class using catalogues or information from the internet. They could plan a timetable of events for their celebrations. ● You could explore time zones and work out the time each New Year’s Day begins in these and other countries. ● A great book called All in a Day by Mitsumasa Anno (ISBN 0-698-11772-7) is available to highlight New Year around the world. In it, ten artists illustrate the similarities and differences between children in eight different parts of the world over one 24-hour day, beginning at eight different times on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. It is a little old-fashioned, but children will recognise some familiar drawing styles and characters, including Eric Carle and Raymond Briggs.

12. 3rd slide: What are you going to be doing this year? ● Use this slide to really focus on calendars, days of the week, months of the year. You could recap the units of time and their equivalences e.g. 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week. ● Ask the children to find out how many days are in each month, what day the 1st of each falls on and so on. ● You could ask them to answer the questions that the children are asking. ● Give pairs of children a copy of the calendar and ask them to identify the dates their birthdays fall on and to mark them. They then work out how long it is between their birthdays. ● They could shade the dates that are weekends, the weekdays that the school holidays fall on and special days of the year, e.g. Easter, Christmas, Divali, Yom Kippur. ● You could ask them to put their fingers on 3rd March and follow a set of instructions for example move on 3 days, 2 weeks, 15 days, 48 hours etc. Do they all land on the same finishing date? There are more ideas that you can explore in the Focus on article of Issue 18 of the Primary Magazine.