Schools Outreach
Are you a school teacher looking to provide additional mathematics activities for your pupils? We offer a range of free resources, workshops and events designed to stimulate and inspire school pupils of all ages.
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If you wish to be kept up to date with our upcoming events for Schools and Teachers, you can join our mailing list of teachers from all around Scotland. To be added to our mailing list, please fill in our survey by clicking on the link below.
Our activities for schools
The School of Mathematics offers a range of activities and resources for schools in and around Edinburgh. Please do get in touch if you would like more information, or if you would like to make use of our free resources or organise an event with us.
Every year we run a series of masterclasses for S2 pupils. These super-curricular masterclasses take place on Saturday mornings, over the course of 5 to 8 weeks, and cover a wide range of fun, interesting and challenging mathematical topics. On this page you can find information about the 2023 program. If your school has missed out the masterclasses series and would like a one-off masterclass, please get in touch.
Edinburgh is a hub for the FunMaths Roadshow, which is a collection of 350 mathematical activities that can be lent to local schools to help support mathematics teaching. There are different activities for different age groups, and the resources can be used flexibly in a variety of contexts.
If you have heard about our Maths Circle and would like to run one within your school, we are very happy to lend our resources and to provide training for teachers. Please, check this page and contact us if you are interested.
This is a collection of resources, aimed at developing mathematical thinking and problem-solving skills, as well as showing the creative and fun side of mathematics. The resources focus on strategy games and some applications of Maths to transport networks. They include some explanatory videos, a range of puzzles targeting different abilities, and tips and advice for teachers who want to use them in the classroom. Click on the link below to see the resources.
Following the link below you can find a series of videos we have recently produced.
Maths Week at Work: a series of videos promoting Mathematics
Five Maths graduates working in different sectors explain how they use Maths in their job. Then they challenge the audience with a puzzle related to their job. A solution to each of the puzzles is also presented.
A group of four final year maths students at the University of Edinburgh have created a free online maths workshop aimed at children aged 10-12. The workshop aims to make maths fun and engaging for the children and demonstrates how maths can be used in many aspects of life. The workshop is focused on planning a holiday, where the children need to earn money by completing mathematical tasks and then using this to budget for their trip. The workshop and all resources can be found on the following page:
Climate Change is one of the biggest issues that we are currently facing, but did you know that there is actually a lot of maths behind it? Check out our resources to see some of the number crunching that Climate Scientists do in their fight to save our planet!
In 2020 we have produced some resources on the topic of Climate Change suitable for S3+ students. The resources include a Powerpoint presentation, together with some notes for teachers and a lesson plan. They are ready to be used in the classroom, or adapted by the teacher as appropriate. To receive the material, please email francesca.iezzi@ed.ac.uk.
We are all aware that Mathematics underpins all STEM subjects, but did you ever think about connections between exploring Mathematics and learning a new language? Together with Linguists at the University of Edinburgh, we are building a collection of activities at the interface between Mathematics and Linguistics, aimed at developing problem solving. Further information will appear soon on this page.
Our outreach staff have experience in running workshops for a range of age groups and in a range of subjects, from cryptography to 4-dimensional geometry, to the mathematics of Arts; from the maths of networks and connections to climate change. We have many students on the Maths Outreach Team who love to talk about their experiences of university mathematics and their favourite topics that they have encountered so far. Please get in touch if you would like to arrange a workshop for your school.
In collaboration with SCI-FUN (The Scottish Science and Technology Roadshow) the School of Mathematics aims to build up a collection of inspiring and challenging exhibits to reflect the current research problems that mathematicians are working on; this could be anything from one-sided surfaces to kaleidoscopes, from hairy doughnuts to bridge-building kits. Many of these resources are used in the workshops we deliver, but can also be used outside of a workshop environment.
We are occasionally able to host tailor-made visits to the School of Mathematics or the University's central campus. Such a visit could include a workshop, a careers talk, a sample lecture or a tour of the building or campus. We might be even able to provide guided mathematical walking tours of the city. Please do get in touch if you are interested, but remember that such an event will need to be organised well in advance.