by Dora Andrikopoulos

Middle School adventures

Do The Sustainable Development Goals Connect To Mathematics?

by Dora Andrikopoulos, Middle School Faculty

This year, one of my goals was to involve students in Mathematics Projects involving the Sustainable Development Goals.

My intention was to inspire my students to develop a greater awareness of existing issues in our world and to help them understand how these issues can be interpreted mathematically. I wanted them to see and discover the relationships and learn how to express their findings in a mathematically meaningful way.

I began to implement the idea of the Sustainable Development Goals that our Grade 6 students had already begun to work with during our United Nations Day in the Middle School. The idea inspired me as it aligns with the ACS Athens Vision and our school goals. We want our students to be aware and sensitive to the world around us.

Referring to our ACS Athens Learner Profile, I decided that this would touch on all characteristics we aim to develop and cultivate in our students. We aim to cultivate knowledgeable thinkers, inquirers, excellent communicators, open-minded, principled and caring human beings. We strive to develop balanced young adults who are ongoing reflective practitioners, who can make responsible decisions to make our world a better place to live in.

In the first Semester Part 1 Project, Grade 6 students were invited to research on their United Nations Goal and develop a mathematics project that required research, literature review, collection of data, possible action plan(s), mathematical processes(es), evaluation and reflection. Students used facts they researched to write word problems and applied their mathematical skills to solve them. They also created hypothetical data to suggest improvements to improve our environment.

Students of this age group are always eager and excited to create, develop projects, investigate and learn. I was so impressed with the outcome of the Sustainable Development Goals Projects. Many of them were informative, well set out and outstanding.

Students continued with Part 2 of the Sustainable Development Goals Project after completing the Statistics Topic in Semester 2. They were encouraged to collect more data, develop organized frequency tables, create different graphs and plots to represent their data and to analyze this information both qualitatively and quantitatively to describe their findings.

Sample images of student work of each stage of our two projects are included in this article.

PART 1: Sustainable Development Goals Project

Stages of Sustainable Development Goals Project

A. Focus Question/Statement Students developed a Focus Question or Statement addressing the Sustainable Development Goal they were to research.

B. Literature Review Students referred to at least 3 different sources of information to collect current existing data of their focus statement. Students cited their sources.

C. Data Collection Students created organized tables of collected data from their research.

D. Action Plan(s) Students wrote about possible actions that one could take to improve the current situation.

E. Mathematical Process(es) Students created their own word problems based on their researched facts. They solved their created problems, showing all mathematical processes, applying their understanding of mathematical concepts. Students also provided hypothetical data to create problems with solutions to suggest possible solutions to the existing world issues.

F. Students analyzed and evaluated their work through a series of questions. They also wrote reflections on a Discussion Forum on Moodle. PART 2 Statistics Project: Sustainable Development Goals

A. Students collected more data through research, and also organized their data into frequency tables.

B. Students made different types of graphs and plots to represent their data.

C. Using their data and graphs, the data was analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. Students used Measures of Central Tendency to describe their findings.

D. Students evaluated their findings and reflected on their experience throughout the projects.

The Sustainable Development Goals Projects gave students the opportunity to research, explore, demonstrate and make sense of what they discovered. It is yet one more of the numerous examples of how we develop awareness and cultivate mindsets in our students, helping them become architects of their own learning.