News May 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 in the last couple of months:

Jennifer Piggott - NRICH Project Director

March signalled the completion of the Engaging Mathematics for all Learners project, funded by the QCA. We would like to thank all the participating schools for their contribution to our work on this. In addition to the materials published by the QCA we will also be publishing case studies on the NRICH website. We hope to do this work over the summer. The schools involved were:
  • Comberton Village College
  • Gable Hall School
  • Longsands Community College
  • Range High School
  • Sawston Village College
  • Sharnbrook Upper School
  • Thomas Deacon Academy
Jenny had a particularly busy couple of weeks in the second half of March, giving a number of talks, including ones to a group of Specialist Schools Head Teachers, an SSAT regional mathematics group, a regional NCETM mathematics conference and the NAMA (national association of mathematics advisers) conference. In addition, Jenny spoke about problem solving at three regional OCR conferences (including one at the headquarters of the Magic Circle in London - very exciting).

Jenny also participated in BBC Radio Fours Go4it! Programme in March, see Liz's news below.

The Easter break meant the ATM and MA conferences, the first in Swansea and the second in Cambridge. Along with other members of the NRICH team, Jenny ran workshops at each of these events. Jenny and Liz also presented their work on Visualising at the Faculty of Education Research Conference in Cambridge.

Jenny has also been working with whole departments in a couple of schools, helping them to develop their ways of working and encouraging the incorporation of rich tasks into schemes of work.

At the end of April, Year 8 students involved in the Enriching Mathematics Project in Tower Hamlets had their final session, led by Jenny. This was a full day at the Ideas Store in Canary Wharf. Their celebration event takes place in early May.

The whole team had a meeting in Cambridge to begin to discuss progression in mathematical problem solving skills. As we progress with our thinking we will share our findings with you.

Liz Woodham - Primary Coordinator

Liz and Jenny participated in Radio 4's Go4it! programme for children, broadcast on March 15. Three pupils from a primary school in Ipswich visited the Centre for Mathematical Sciences and posed some tricky questions for us. They explored the origins of zero with Jenny and worked out the strategy involved in the game Got It , played with fifteen counters.

Liz worked with teachers in Lambeth, introducing them to the NRICH site, and she led the third of three twilight staff meetings for teachers in a primary school in Hampshire. She also worked with children and teachers at a school in Ealing, and led an INSET morning for staff at a primary school in north London.

On March 12, the fourth curriculum development day in Haringey took place. Amongst other things, we discussed different reasons for recording. We distinguished between recording for ourselves and recording to communicate with others, and how it would help pupils to know why they are being asked to 'write down' the mathematics.

Liz felt very privileged to return to Devon for the feedback day of the Enriching Mathematics Project . The teachers taking part have trialled many, many NRICH activities in their classrooms and have written detailed feedback for us. This will be invaluable in improving NRICH resources in the future and Liz is extremely grateful for their enthusiasm and commitment.

With great help from Jenny Murray and Lynne McClure, Liz led sessions for primary teachers at The Association of Teachers of Mathematics conference in Swansea and The Mathematical Association conference in Cambridge over the Easter break. Both sessions focused on integrating rich mathematical tasks into the curriculum.

Jenny and Liz also presented their work on Visualising at the Faculty of Education Research Conference in Cambridge.

On March 23, the NRICH Primary Team met for a day together to plan future website content and discuss issues related to primary mathematics.

Charlie Gilderdale

In March we hosted the second Teacher Inspiration Day . The last one in the current series will take place in July. For information and an application form for the 2009-10 series click here

Together with the teachers from six secondary schools we contributed to the QCA guidance document for the Engaging Mathematics for all Learners Project. QCA have also published video case studies of two of our partner schools using NRICH resources: Sharnbrook Upper School and Comberton Village College

Led a workshop at the Mathematical Association Easter Conference on "Embedding Rich Tasks into the Curriculum".

Led workshops in India and Bangladesh for the University of Cambridge International Examinations.

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

Together with Lynne McClure, we completed our work 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.

Continued to develop Stage 3 resources for the website.

Steve Hewson - Post-16 coordinator

This month saw the launch of the pilot for our post 16 level science and mathematics area of the website: stemNRICH is now ready for the development of new material involving biology, chemistry, physics, engineering and applied mathematics. Steve met with many people involved in education to help to develop this area of the website. This fascinating work is raising many issues concerning the teaching and learning of more advanced mathematics and the transition to university.

On 19th March NRICH held the 2nd Goldman Sachs teachers inspiration day, and Steve ran sessions focussing on the enrichment of KS5 and how to get rich activity into the A-level classroom. Some of these ideas were also taken along to the ATM conference in Swansea where Steve led a session on embedding rich tasks into the curriculum. In preparation for this, some new applied mapping documents for A-level were made available.

Steve also ran a 2 hour problem solving session for a very able group of 17 year old students who are interested in studying mathematics, science or engineering at university. This was a good chance to see how far one is able to take a good rich task!

More work with students involved helping a group of year 9 students with a visit to the Centre of Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge. Here the students could engage with many fascinating areas of higher mathematics.

The new Triple Science GCSE is due to arrive soon. To assist with this, Steve wrote a training pack for teachers entitled Exploring the mathematical issues in the teaching and learning of triple science. This makes good use of the ideas emerging from stemNRICH.

Steve also gave a career interview for Plus magazine, and put together the finishing touches for a paper on tricks in mathematics.

At the end of April, Steve also attended a conference exploring the issues surrounding G&T engagement with STEM, where he led a workshop to science and maths teachers.

Finally, Steve continued to create new material for NRICH. The Stage 5 team have many plans for the development of the new site, which we hope to roll out over the summer, including the development of A-level weekly problems.

Alison Kiddle

Alison has been settling into the NRICH team, shadowing colleagues who were out and about. She visited Haringey to see Liz working with primary teachers, and also accompanied Charlie to Hammersmith. It was a really valuable experience to see these sessions.

The second Teacher Inspiration Day offered an opportunity to work with Steve as he ran sessions on enrichment at Key Stage 5, and Alison is looking forward to contributing more to the development of Key Stage 5 materials in the next few months.

Alison attended her first conference, the MA Easter Conference in Cambridge, where the sessions on a wide variety mathematical topics stimulated lots of ideas for future Stage 4 problems. She is looking forward to developing these ideas in the next few months.

Together with Charlie, Alison has done a lot of work on combining the separate Key Stage 3 and 4 mapping documents into a single document. Alison and Charlie have also been working together to develop a short series of problems about graphs and transformations.

Alison has worked with Jenny on the Enriching Mathematics Project in Tower Hamlets, and led some activities at their final session in April. This was a good opportunity to put into practice some of the ideas she had picked up from shadowing the rest of the team.

Finally, Alison has been working on lots of new Stage 4 resources for the website.

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