Category Archives: School Issues

Brunel AND Nelson in King’s

The ATM/MA london Branch was treated to on of Peter Ransom’s barnstorming performaces last Saturday. A big message that we share with our PGCE students is that teaching is a performance art and ensuring that your lessons have a good dose of theatre will bring students in to your message. Well, Peter brings avery big dose of theatre. Right down to the brilliant stand-up touches … is he really going to drop the cannon ball? Well, yes, naturally. We got through transformational geometry, force functions in suspension bridge chains, cannon ball stacking sequences and the destructive impact of cannon balls by linear and quadratic scaling. So, no messing maths. Please come back soon to see the photos … and come to our next session which will be 10:30 Saturday 24th March (King’s College London, the Franklin Wilkins Building on Stamford Street, SE1, just down from the IMAX cinema), which is the Danny Brown maths Workshops. Read all about it at Danny’s site: www.makemaths.com

Maths Trails

The ATM/MA London branch meeting today was a wander round Parliament Square, up Whitehall and Round Trafalgar Square. Four groups of maths teachers made the trek and were intrigued to see this most famous bit of London in a different light. The trail is one of a number that I prepared during my time working for maths Year 2000 and it’s great to see it used again. To support the session, I set up a new web sight with the great URL of www.mathstrails.org.uk . You’ll find PDF and Word versions of all of my trails plus links and details of a load of other trails and trail related materials. Please visit and most especially, please contribute, you maths trail fans with your own ideas, materials and stories.

In the end, it’s just great to get out and about and look at things in a different way. So, take the opportunity and get your students out too!

It’s the Maths we care about

I am currently interviewing candidates for the 2012/13 PGCE maths. We expect fees for the course to be in excess of £9000 this year, but there is still a bursary for those coming in to teaching. There has been great publicity about the present secretary of state’s interest in teachers with highly accredited subject knowledge, so the bursaries are £20K if you have a 1st, £15K for a 2:1 and £12K for a 2:2. If you have a 3rd in your first degree, no support is given, so you will not get a place. Now it is deeply arguable as to whether there is any relationship between the class of your degree and your abilities as a teacher. However, when you find out that the subject of the degree is not relavent, nor is the University it came from, then you simply have to look in awe and wonder and ask if the DfE did this after a drunken night out and forgot to review. It is seriously the case that a candidate with a 1st in Spanish (and presumably a maths enhancement course) from AnyWhere Uni will get £20K and someone with a 2:2 in Pure Maths from Cambridge will get £12K to become a maths teacher. If someone has Mr Gove’s ear, please check that he really means this. I cannot believe he does.

Charmingly, Mr Gove’s maths Tsar has a 3rd in Engineering. The power of celebrity knows no bounds.

Making it ‘Real’

As owners of a games shop we are honour bound to play games at Christmas! No really, we do love them. So, Val, Katie (13) and I played a game of Risk. Now Risk is not so PC overall but, well, when you have made an alliance with the mass armies (in this case of the evil of middle earth) and they have attacked your opponent on your behalf and your turn comes round and you now realise you can renege on your agreement and wipe them out … well that is tough. Emotion, scruples, morality all bound up in tough decision making. Now I think you really (up to a point seriously) do have to debrief after a game like that, but is sure is that you are in the situation making the decisions … a history lesson for sure but not just discussing the issues cold. Continue reading Making it ‘Real’

Assessment

I had an interesting conversation with a former maths teacher who was telling me how much she disliked ‘investigations’. She said that you could never tell whether a student had done the work themselves or if their Dad had done it for them. It was clear to me that steering the conversation round to wondering about the difference between investigating mathematically and submitting GCSE coursework, wasn’t going to get me anywhere, so I had to nod and force a polite smile. On one level it was deeply depressing how pleased maths teachers were when GCSE coursework was abandoned for maths exams. On the other, the whole process had been so discredited … Continue reading Assessment

Maths Events

I was asked to run a session for PGCE students using a kit of parts we make called Maths-for-a-Day. Basically, we took the content of the kits I had produced for the shopping centre events I organised during Maths Year 2000 and packaged them up in a box suitable for a school maths event. I asked for 6 volunteers from the group to staff the activities and the remainder were punters. Continue reading Maths Events

Virtual Learning Environments

I’ve done a lot of work with Fronter, I manage a number of Moodle VLEs e.g. The Education Interactive courses portal and the ATM/MA London Branch at King’s site LondonMaths . At King’s, I use their ELK (formally BlackBoard) system. So, what is it, that these systems sell themselves on? Really it boils down to one thing: anywhere, anytime access to teaching materials. Sure, you can make cute little multiple choice quizzes that are self marking and record and track progress, but you are clearly noit going to design and build your own set of these for your whole courses. Student protfolios are very neat, but they only work if students can SUBMIT their work Continue reading Virtual Learning Environments

Applied Maths

So, why do we teach students maths in school? How tempting it is, to say “because it’s useful”. Well, I defy anyone to respond to this post by finding a single example taking from a school maths text book, in which something happens that (a) could be described as useful and (b) happens in the manner that it might do if someone were actually doing it. Continue reading Applied Maths

Why bother with technology in maths classrooms?

Working with a group of aspiring entrants to the teaching profession is always an interesting opportunity. They still have the open mindedness about this noble profession that allows for certainties to be challenged and opportunities explored. The reality is that  dialogic teaching supported  by dynamic technology (meaning both parties: student and teacher, have control over how the narrative plays out) is a very rare event in schools. The mass of technology is either already booked out so kids can be trained to use MS office 2003 or is pre-programmed for zombie teachers to press the next button on their MyMaths lesson. Continue reading Why bother with technology in maths classrooms?

So, why do we put kids in sets?

I am not unique in wishing to question the omnipresence of putting kids into different groups according to the teacher’s perception of their potential to achieve. Jo Boaler has been shouting this loudly for some time now (see The Elephant in the Classroom) and Anne Watson makes the case forcefully (see Raising Achievement …). So, how can it be that even primary school teachers feel unable to to teach a class of 7 year olds the same number skills at the same time – because there is such a great gap in their likelihood to succeed? Continue reading So, why do we put kids in sets?