Combining Mathematics and Wellness Projects

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Combining Mathematics and Wellness. Wellness Projects.


Many pupils in school struggle with mathematics and find it one of the hardest subjects to get involved in. I can personally relate to this as maths is a subject I have always found difficult, especially in primary school. Due to this common problem/ struggle within schools throughout Britain, schools have begun to introduce projects and fun ways of incorporating maths within lessons. 

One way schools are doing this is through wellness projects. These are projects that relates mathematics and problem solving, to real life skills or situations. An example of this is using maths in class to measure data. Through this children are able to create their own hypothesis’, methods and other mathematical data collecting skills to become able to produce their own results for something they have been involved in from the beginning.

Instead of teachers giving children numbers on a page and asking them to produce graphs or analyse data from information they have no relation too, they are collecting results that they care about and want to complete and analyse until the end. 

One example of this in relation to wellness projects could be the children being in the cafeteria collecting data about healthy food or smiling etc. Combining wellness with any subject allows children to begin discussing health and wellbeing without being in a particular lesson about it. Integration of subjects is considered to increase understanding through creating connections between ideas in meaningful learning contexts, (Dave et al. 2012.) Allowing children to decide what they are studying or analysing within this project will show a greater long term understanding and will as said before, create links through this learning. 

After the children have collected the data they will most likely be asked to then put this data in to a graph or table. With normal numbers children could find this boring, but as they have been included since the beginning they will most likely be willing and want to complete the graph by analysing the data and finish the project. This could be done over several maths lessons. 

Making maths relatable and a part of every day life, I believe, is the beginning of creating a more healthy relationship to maths in schools. Showing it to not be scary but helpful and rewarding. 








I have included a possible lesson plan that could be used for a lesson like this and how a teacher could plan it out.





Possible Lesson Plan
Dave et al. (2012) Developing pre-service primary teachers’ perceptions of cross-curricula teaching through reflection on learning. Taylor & Francis: Online. 

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