News March 2009


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Out and About

We are always out and about in schools, colleges and universities, working with a variety of teachers, professionals and students. These are some of the activities that members of the team were up to last month:

Jennifer Piggott - NRICH Project Director

Image of snow
For the first time in her career, Jenny was unable to get to work due to the gloriously bad weather at the beginning of February. Lots of snow and wonderful views. One advantage of working on a project with such a significant IT component is that, despite the weather, it was still possible to keep very busy!

The Enrichment project in Tower Hamlets has been going very well. This term the students have been working on geometrical contexts for most of the sessions as well as having a visit from James Grime of the Enigma Project .

Work done by Jenny on helping teachers to support learners in developing mathematical process and problem-solving skills has been published on the Standards Website ( http://nationalstrategies.standards.dcsf.gov.uk/secondary/framework/maths/fwsm/mlo).

At the end of February, Cathy Smith gave a joint paper (C Smith and J Piggott), based on the Evaluation of the work of NRICH in Tower Hamlets, to the BSRLM conference in Cambridge.

Jenny has run a masterclass workshop for Year 9 pupils in Peterborough this month and a workshop for teachers at a national conference on "Teaching Personal Learning and Thinking Skills in the New Curriculum".

As well as doing some teaching in the Faculty of Education, Jenny has been preparing a number of articles for journals such as Equals and Research Intelligence.

Looking forward to next month, Jenny will be leading a workshop at the NCETM Influential Mathematics Teachers Regional Event in Cambridge , 19-20 March.

Liz Woodham - Primary Coordinator

On February 12, Cambridgeshire held its annual one-day primary teachers' mathematics conference which this year was entitled 'Image Conscious'. Liz led a session for all delegates focusing on the role visualising can play in problem solving.

Liz and the primary team worked at polishing the March problems, articles and games, and we started to look forward to May's and June's website content.

This month, Liz has started to put together the summer edition of Primary Mathematics which she is 'guest editing'. This is proving a fascinating and satisfying job, if not slightly frustrating at times! The journal will be published by The Mathematical Association in May.

Liz also participated in the second day of a Primary Curriculum Working Conference where delegates were invited to discuss, and feedback on, the interim report of the Rose Review.

Charlie Gilderdale

Continues to work with students from the schools involved in the Independent-State School Partnership Project in Wimbledon.

Together with Jenny and the teachers from six secondary schools we have been finalising the case studies for the Engaging Mathematics for all Learners Project which will form the basis of the guidance that QCA will be publishing on its website.

Together with Lynne McClure, continued working with teachers from Hammersmith & Fulham primary and secondary schools, looking at ways of engaging and challenging high attaining students at the end of Key Stage 2 and the beginning of Key Stage 3.

Continues to develop Stage 3 resources for the website.

Steve Hewson - Post-16 coordinator

This month, Steve started the proper development of the stemNRICH (previously referred to as sciNRICH!) part of the website, devoted to the applications of mathematics to science. This will extend the existing bioNRICH part of NRICH and will involve a re-ordering of material to include basic mathematics, applied mathematics, chemistry, physics and engineering. If you are interested in this idea, please get in touch .

February was a media-focussed month in which Steve met with the media team from Cambridge University to discuss promoting the new science applications and also attended the annual Daily Telegraph Scientists Meet The Media Party at the Royal Society in London. He also presented NRICH work at the STEMnet conference in Chelmsford.

Of course, Steve also did the usual site development in terms of both under-the-covers IT and development of material.

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