News June 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

May included a wonderful break for Jenny in Turkey. Travelling from Istanbul in the West to Mount Ararat in the East, she was lucky enough to see some amazing historical sites as well as intriguing geological formations. Here are four pictures she took at the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. There is much to see and discuss in each of the images so Jenny will be creating a resource on the July site based on them.

Image from Topkapi Palace Image from Topkapi Palace Image from Topkapi Palace Image from Topkapi Palace

Jenny has also been doing some real work in May! In addition to working with colleagues on planning for the Fast Forward Study Schools and the Teacher Inspiration days , Jenny worked with colleagues from a school in County Durham, which she will be returning to in June, and attended the celebration event for the Mathematics Enrichment Project in Tower Hamlets. Despite the success of this programme over the past six years, the generous support of the Shine Trust and, last year, the More Maths Grads , we have as yet been unable to secure funding for next year.

At the end of May Jenny gave a presentation at the UKMT Teacher Meeting in Glasgow.

Jenny has also been doing work within the Faculty of Education.

Liz Woodham - Primary Coordinator

On April 30, the fifth curriculum development day in Haringey took place. We welcomed Lynne McClure to lead a thought-provoking and rich day. In the morning, the focus was on mathematical games - the what, why and how to use them in the classroom. The afternoon session encouraged participants to think about opening up teaching to embed mathematical thinking. We look forward to our final day together in June when we hope to have some of last year's teachers joining us too.

Liz returned once more to Devon to attend the county's Primary Maths Conference, armed with NRICH postcards and MMP leaflets. As well as catching up with teachers who have been involved in the Enriching Mathematics Project, and displaying some of their children's work, Liz was able to further spread the word about NRICH.

Liz has begun to think about how resources for Early Years Foundation Stage practitioners could be presented on NRICH. This is an area which the Primary Team would like to develop in the future - it is an exciting challenge for us.

On the weekend of May 9 and 10, Liz joined her first meeting of the Association of Teachers of Mathematics (ATM) General Council. It proved an enjoyable experience and she feels privileged to be part of a group whose members are so passionate about mathematics education.

As usual, Liz has continued to work with colleagues on primary materials for publication on NRICH in future months (June, July and September).


Charlie Gilderdale

We have been planning for the July Teacher Inspiration Day , the last of the current series. For information and an application form for the 2009-10 series click here

We have also been planning the third Fast Forward Study School which will take place at the end of term. The 2009-10 programme has been heavily oversubscribed. Applications are now closed and forty Year 9 students have been selected to participate.

Visited Cardiff in early May to continue working with the teachers involved in the NRICH/mathcymru Project . Any Key Stage 2 and 3 teachers interested in participating next year should contact Sara Longbottom

Continued to develop Stage 3 resources for the website.

Steve Hewson - Post-16 coordinator

A good portion of May has been devoted to stemNRICH with time set aside for Steve to think about looking at the mathematics involved in chemistry and physics. The Cambridge University Transkills Project generously offered to fund four summer students to test-run and improve the materials for a four week period over the summer. We have now recruited these students who, with their fresh experience of negotiating the transition from school to university, should be of great use in developing stemNRICH.

Steve continued to work on the development of the main stage 5 part of NRICH including the creation of materials, providing input to the teacher inspiration days and Fast Forward Study Schools and work with the mathematics faculty


Alison Kiddle

Alison has been very busy this month moving house! Working on new Stage 4 resources for the website has made a pleasant change from packing and unpacking boxes.

Alison spent some time working with Charlie this month preparing for the next Teacher Inspiration Day and the third Fast Forward study school. Preparation for the study school has stimulated lots of ideas for new problems which will appear on the site in the next few months.

Alison also spent time working with Steve looking at Stage 5 resources together and discussing new ideas to develop. It was great fun to have a go at some Stage 5 problems after working mainly on Stage 4 content in the last few months, and ideas for some interesting new Stage 5 material came out of it - watch this space!


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