Mr Moon, the Principal at a small primary school in country in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales, recently convinced the school council to have the lovely old school hall freshly painted and the decorative eaves around the building restored. It looks fantastic… but unfortunately the cockatoos that frequent the school playground think that the new eaves taste fantastic, too! The hungry birds have been flocking down in the afternoons and have gotten busy nibbling away at the new eaves, pecking off the paint and nibbling at the fresh timber underneath. It’s not good for the birds, and certainly not good for the school’s nicely restored hall!
Mr Moon and his fellow teachers and students want to keep the birds coming to the playground, but would rather them eat something much more healthy. So, he has decided to design and build them a bird feeder. Mr Moon looked on the Internet for some designs, but nothing really was suitable either for big cockatoos or for the school playground. So, he did what all good teachers do – he delegated the task to his students!
Developed through collaboration between the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute and Mr Aaron Moon and Ms Fiona Hillier at St Joseph’s Primary School, Denman, New South Wales, this work unit provides a rich, contextual activity through which students can explore the applications of measurement (length, area and capacity), to a real problem in an everyday context for Students in Years 5 & 6.
Image Credit: Rawlinson, D., ‘Cacatua galerita perching on a branch’, sourced from Wikipedia and labelled for non-commercial reuse. This image is a derivative work cropped from the original by Snowmanradio – originally posted to ‘Flickr’ as “Parrot” and uploaded to Commons.
