Spanish Gymkhana

The way we did it.

The aim of the Spanish gymkhana was to show us round the city of Seville by means of Maths problems that the French pupils had to solve. It was divided into three parts: information about the different places or events, clues and Maths problems. The whole being written in English, of course! To be able to solve the problems, our pupils were supposed to understand the information that was given, which was not that easy. So we first worked on its printed version as a reading comprehension exercise (scanning and skimming tasks mainly). As far is English is concerned, it took us two hours to get through. After our preparation time, most of the pupils had understood how the gymkhana worked and were thus ready for the Maths part of it. In class, they started to solve the problems in pairs. As the two hours allowed were not enough, the most courageous finished them at home.

In May, the Spanish maths teacher asked us to translate into French one activity of their gymkhana. She would like the whole gymkhana to be written into 3 languages (English, Spanish and French) next year. When she have told to some colleagues about their gymkhana, they have said that they would like to do it, but it is hard in English.
Some of our pupils tried to translate the activity about Giralda but it wasn't so easy.