World Maritime Day - FREE iPad activity

29th September 2016 marks the World Maritime Day Forum 2016. A large debate will be going on with four panellists, all about the challenges that global shipping faces. The information page on the day has lots of useful information  about the theme, so take a look if you are interested. You can also check out @IMOHQ, the International Maritime Organization's Twitter page, plus the hashtag #WorldMaritimeDay.

To join in ourselves, we have transformed one of our Digital Mysteries iPad apps into a FREE Thinking Kit activity: Captain Quint. Students are asked to work out what they think happened when Captain Quint and his crew aimed to sail round the world in 50 days. The activity is aimed at those around age 10-12 and works on a whole bunch of mathematics skills, plus collaboration, thinking skills and problem-solving! Cards include maps, tables, lots of story-based clues and hints about what the characters are like.

To download it:

1. Download the Thinking Kit App if you haven't already - search the title on the App Store or click here.
2. Open the app, tap Educator or Learner then Download Task.
3. Enter the code 7017.

A screenshot of the activity within the app.

Full activity description

This activity maps to the maths curriculum. Specifically:

• Number – addition and subtraction
• Number – multiplication and division
• Number – fractions (including percentages)
• Statistics
• Measurement

Although the calculation involved in Captain Quint requires precision, the task is open-ended and provides scope for pupils to come up with and justify more than one possible scenario.

The task will challenge pupils to decide and justify to each other which operations and methods they need to use to solve a multistep problem.  As well as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, some calculations also involve fractions and knowledge of percentage and fraction equivalents. Pupils will need to interpret information in tables, graphs and maps and be able to compare and calculate different measures, involving capacity and distance over time.

It could be used diagnostically within the maths curriculum to assess pupils’ confidence in recognising and applying these concepts.

This task was originally designed with three difficulty levels in mind. By default, the task is the 'hard' option as it has all cards included. In the Thinking Kit Creator, you can edit the activity. For Medium difficulty, delete card 26. For Easy difficulty, delete cards 21-26.