1. In London, all bus services were cancelled for the first time in living memory. Why weren’t we prepared for this snow? Arctic Snap continues… February 2009! Up to 12 inches of snow in Surrey! Snowbound Britain: Worst snowstorms For 18 years.

2. Arctic Snap began in December 2008! How cold does it have to be before the sea freezes? Why is it so cold? The temperature dropped to –12 o C last night. Temperatures plunge to –12 o C (10.4 o F) overnight, on the coldest night so far of the past week's cold snap. The day the sea froze! Sub-zero temperatures in Dorset have frozen a half-mile stretch of sea.

3. I wonder what these lines are all about? The big freeze! A local London weatherman has estimated that the temperatures for January were on average 3 o higher than in December. Dozens of schools were closed and thousands of homes were without water as the UK continued to suffer from the effects of freezing weather. Since December 1 2008, the meteorological start to winter, the average UK temperature has been only 35.1 o F (1.7 o C), well below the 1971-2000 average of 40.5 o F (4.7 o C). It has been the coldest December since 1976.

4. Up2d8 maths Teacher’s guide We are slowly emerging from the winter season – the days are getting longer, the temperatures are getting warmer and the snow has finally gone. The weather we experienced this winter has been the worst for nearly two decades, bringing with it chaos on the roads and railways, and school closures among other things. It has been caused by bands of low and high pressure with air streams coming from the Arctic. … continued on the next slide

5. These extreme weather conditions provide some great opportunities for mathematics involving concepts such as temperature, measurement, data handling and shape – and they also make great links between mathematics and science. You can adapt some of the ideas on these spreads to suit most age groups from EYFS through to Year 6. Issue 4 of the Primary Magazine had a focus on winter, where you can find other information and ideas for teaching activities within this theme. Click here to find it.here The starter activities in that issue also have some super ideasstarter Issue 5 is worth looking at too.

6. 1 st spread: Arctic snap continues... February 2009 ●Chat to the children about their experiences of the recent snow – did they build snowmen, make snowballs, igloos, go sledging? Make a tally of the number of children who did each of these and any other activities they might have suggested. Turn it into a frequency table and then ask them to make pictograms or bar charts to show the information. ●Discuss why there has been so much snow: the cold snap of December was dominated by high pressure, which meant that although temperatures were low, there was very little snow. In February, the cold air from Arctic Russia was being dragged in by active weather systems which added the moisture necessary for snow. Click here for more information.here ●Look at the statement about the bus services being cancelled for the first time in living memory (they even ran during the Blitz) and lead this into a discussion as to why the country couldn’t cope with all the snow e.g. not used to this amount of snow, insufficient supplies of grit… ●Point out the statement that there were 12 inches of snow in Surrey. Ask the children to convert this to centimetres (30.48cms) by multiplying 12 by 2.54cm (the equivalent to one inch). You could convert other amounts from imperial to metric and vice versa. ●Ask the children to make a depth gauge out of cardboard tubes or similar (divided into intervals appropriate to their key stage) to show possible depths of snow. ●Look at the picture of the snowman and ask the children to estimate how tall it could be if it was about the size of an adult. They could measure out lengths of string or strips of paper to these sizes. They could use building blocks to make different heights of imaginary snowmen that are the same height as they are and measure these … …continued on the next slide

7. 1 st spread: Arctic snap continues... February 2009 continued… ●You could ask the children to make small snowmen out of plasticine, modelling clay, play-doh or similar and then to line them up in order from shortest to tallest. They could estimate their heights, then measure and compare. ●You could look at the history of igloos (the native peoples of the far north used them primarily as temporary hunting shelters) and Eskimos (Inuits). You could develop this into an activity that involves finding on maps where these come from and looking at the climate there and their distance from the UK. ●Look at the people in the picture by the lake and discuss the clothes they are wearing. This could lead into a ‘finding all possibilities’ type of investigation by giving the children a list or pictures of items of winter clothing e.g. two different coloured scarves, hats and pairs of gloves and ask them to work out how many different ways they can dress a drawing of a child in trousers, jacket and wellington boots. ●You could do some basic data handling activities by making lists, tallies and tables to show the different winter clothes the children like to wear. ●You could make symmetrical snowflakes by folding paper into halves, quarters or eighths and develop this with older children by making a variety of polyhedrons that alone or when stuck together might resemble them in 3D. ●Discuss how cold it must be for water to freeze (0 0 C or 34 0 F). You could experiment by melting ice cubes in a bowl, taking the temperature over a period of an hour or so and plot the readings on a line graph. ●Once the ice cubes have melted you could measure how many millimetres of water there is. …continued on the next slide

8. 1 st spread: Arctic snap continues... February 2009 continued… ●You could encourage the children to make snowman footprints using white paint on a coloured background. This could provide useful ways to practice counting in twos or looking at number pairs to 10 and 20 and of course, counting. ●Draw outlines of 10 snowmen on a strip of paper (half A3 is ideal). Children can decorate them as they wish, then number them from 1 to 10: use to support counting forward and back to 10. (Useful for supporting counting in John Foster’s poem too.) ●Turn an edged tabletop into a snow scene, using flour or salt, though flour is much safer. You must be very careful if using salt, as licked fingers can rapidly raise a child’s salt levels. Cut lolly sticks in half to make skis for play people. Glue them on – you can easily soak the play people later to remove them. Number the play people and hold ski races. Who came first/second/last?

9. 2 nd spread: Arctic snap in December 2008 Spend some time talking about why the weather in December was so cold but dry, with very little, if any, snow – unlike February: air streams coming from the Arctic into an area dominated by high pressure which leaves the atmosphere dry with few clouds. For more details about the weather in December look at the BBC weather website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/ukweather/year_review/reviews/december2008_review _england.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/ukweather/year_review/reviews/december2008_review _england.shtml This spread provides another starting point for mathematics opportunities such as: ●Using a thermometer on an interactive programme such as the one from the Primary Strategy website, demonstrate how temperature rises and falls. Ask children to tell you the differences between the maximum and minimum temperatures that you show. You can differentiate this by using different scales. Show negative temperatures such as the one on the spread. ●Give the children a blank number line each and ask them to make a thermometer scale from, say, – 20 0 C to 20 0 C (this can be adapted to realistic temperature numbers that the children are confident working within). Ask them to imagine the temperatures is 5 0 C and to put their finger where that is on their thermometer, next tell them the temperature rises 3 0 C and then falls 9 0 C – they follow these moves with their finger and then tell you what the new temperature is. Repeat this a few times. ●Convert temperatures from Celsius to Fahrenheit using the rule: take the temperature in Celsius and multiply by 1.8. Add 32 degrees to give the result in degrees Fahrenheit. Next ask the children to work out how to change the temperature from Fahrenheit to Celsius. ●Write a list of temperatures on the board for an imaginary week or fortnight and ask the children to plot these on bar or line graphs. …continued on the next slide

10. 2 nd spread: Arctic snap in December 2008 continued… ●Focus on the section which mentions the sea freezing and explore this. Ordinary water freezes at 0 0 C (32 0 F), generally on the surface of the sea, under normal conditions, water will start to freeze at about 28 deg F or nearly -2 C. For given water temperatures, ask the children to work out how much they need to fall to freeze. ●The children could make a weather chart for the week that you use this resource. They could include measuring rainfall and temperature, noting whether it is sunny, cloudy etc. They could then compare the days, which could entail finding differences in daily rainfall and temperatures. ●If you have a data logger, use it to log the classroom temperature for a day, or for a period of the day when there are lots of comings and goings such as arrival time, playtime, lunchtime etc. The context makes it so much easier for the children to understand the resulting graph and therefore it is accessible to younger children.

11. 3 rd spread: Winter has been colder! This spread is more challenging than the previous two and would be a suitable extension for Years 5 and 6. ●Discuss the information from the newspaper clips, asking the children what they think the one referring to the temperature means and then discuss why schools might close and homes be without water. You could use this as an opportunity to remind children of the freezing point of water and also to carry out some activities using thermometers ●You could discuss the meaning of ‘average’ and work through some examples from temperature data that you have made up and written on the board. ●You could ask the children what is meant by maximum and minimum temperature and then give them some time to interpret the line graph. ●The children could take the temperatures at the daily interval and make a bar chart to represent the information. ●Focus on the local weatherman’s estimation and ask the children to draw another line graph for his temperatures. They could concentrate on either the maximum or minimum or do one for both.