NRICH / mathcymru

There has been a fantastic response to this year's free CPD project promoting the use of NRICH in the classroom. Clusters involving groups of junior schools with their partner secondary school, will work together on the project. The focus is on the transition phase between primary and secondary education.

The main clusters are in Caerphilly, Gwynedd, Pembrokeshire, Torfaen, Swansea and Newport with a few other schools working in pairs. The teachers will receive training and support on the use of the NRICH website from Sara Longbottom, the mathcymru/NRICH Officer at Techniquest

The work got underway in September with a conference for participating schools, where teachers were introduced to the NRICH website. Over the following weeks, each school will receive a visit from Sara where she uses NRICH materials in the classroom. There will be two more conferences and further rounds of visits for all schools taking part in this CPD.

Over the last two years, Sara has met many of the Wales Maths Advisors and has been working with them to bring NRICH to more maths teachers around Wales. Already groups of teachers from Wrexham, the Vale of Glamorgan, Anglesey, Carmarthenshire, Powys, Monmouthshire and Ceredigion have worked with her using NRICH materials.

mathcymru is keen to encourage the use of NRICH resources to support more problem solving in maths classrooms. Sara says: "The response both from pupils and teachers has been fantastic. The problems from the NRICH website really stretch the pupils and make them use different approaches to finding the answers. We expect pupils will begin to use the website themselves, ultimately sending in solutions."

Linda Bebb has been teaching maths at King Henry VIII School in Abergavenny for 15 years. She says the problems and games encourage logical thinking, even in children who find it difficult to cope with traditional number work. She says: "I think they respond well to these resources because they're fun... it's different, and they're using their maths skills in a different way. The NRICH site gives me ideas... such as using spatial arrangements in work on fractions - it engages the pupils. I work with years 7 and 8 in school... KS3... and I've already started building NRICH resources into my Scheme of Work. Sara has been a big help in pointing me to relevant games and problems, as there are so many to choose from!"

Charlie Gilderdale from the Millennium Mathematics Project says they're delighted that Sara is spreading the word that problem solving is at the heart of doing mathematics: "With her help we hope that more and more teachers will get to know about the free mathematics resources available on the NRICH website."