Newspaper Maths … Student Copymasters: for Years 4-9 Activity Card 1 The News in Your Newspaper Preparation: You will need one newspaper and a ruler. 1. Newspaper space is measured in column centimetres. A column centimetre is the space which is one column wide and one centimetre long. 2. News can be divided into three categories: local, national and international. How much space in your newspaper is given to each of these categories of news? Work with a partner for this activity. To begin with use the front page only. For each news item, decide whether it is local, national or international news. Keep a tally of this information on a table similar to this: News items per column centimetre per page Local National International 25cc 33cc 21cc 34cc   68cc Now do the same for the other news pages and record them on your table. 3. Calculate the total column centimetres devoted to each category of news. 4. Calculate the percentage of space given to each category. Activity Card 2 Hatched, Matched and Dispatched Have you ever heard the Births, Marriages and Deaths columns of the newspaper referred to in this way? Preparation: Collect newspapers for one week. 1. Find the average age of people who died this week. Disregard the few death notices where the age of the deceased is not recorded. Be careful to avoid those notices that are the second or even third notice for the same person. 2. How many births were announced this week? How could you compare the number of births with the number of deaths? Would you use a percentage or a ratio? Is there some other way? 3. How many engagement notices were there this week? 4. How many marriage notices were there this week? 5. Find the ratio of engagement notices to marriage notices. Activity Card 3 How Fast Do You Read? Preparation: Borrow a stopwatch or have someone time you using the seconds hand of a watch. 1. Estimate the number of words you could read in one minute. This is your estimated reading rate. Ask three or four others in the class to estimate their reading rates. 2. Choose a lengthy news item. It will need to be at least two full columns or equivalent of two full columns. 3. Read silently for four minutes. Count the number of words you read in the four minutes. 4. Calculate your reading speed in words per minute. Ask three or four friends to do the same. Counting the number of words you read was rather a pain, wasn't it? Can you think of a better way or a quicker way to calculate the number or words read? (Clue - think about lines and average and multiply) 5. Does your reading rate alter when reading out loud? Choose another news item and read to a friend for four minutes. Calculate your oral reading rate in words per minute. 6. How does you oral reading rate compare with your silent reading rate. 7. Work out how you would complete this sentence. My silent reading rate is ...% faster than my oral rate. Activity Card 4 Cars, Cars, Cars Preparation: Choose an advertisement from a major second hand car dealer. 1. Notice that the prices of a large number of cars end in $ . . . 995. Why do you think this is so? 2. Could you find a way to quickly estimate the total value of the advertised dealers stock? 3. What is the actual total value of the stock advertised? 4. What is the difference between your estimate of the value and the actual value? 5. Most car dealers will not tell you what their mark-up is, i.e. the difference between the amount they buy the car for and the amount they sell the car for. The mark-up is likely to be about 20-25% of the price the dealer paid for the car. Let's assume it is 20%. Find out how much the dealer had to pay to buy all his advertised present stock How much money will he make if he sells all of his advertised stock? Calculate the average price of the vehicle for sale. Do you have a lesson you would like to share with other teachers? Simply email us an attached Word, Works or PDF file and we will add it to our library. Don't forget to include your name and school so we can acknowledge your work. Click on the email icon below.