News September 2009


The best way to keep track of updates and other developments is to register for our newsletter .

Go to NRICH - What We Do to find out more about all our activities.

Annual report

The NRICH annual report for 2008-2009 has been completed. You can read this here.

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 have been up to in the last two months:

Jennifer Piggott - NRICH Project Director

Tower
July was like a great adventure, squeezing in a trip to Scotland, where Jenny became engaged in rock balancing. Visits to schools in Wigan, Ipswich and Milton Keynes were interspersed with preparation for the Fast Forwards summer schools, site planning and attending an excellent seminar at the Nuffield Foundation Headquarters in London concerning Key understandings in mathematics learning. The summary makes an excellent and illuminating read.

In the last week of July the first cohort of Fast Forward students came for their third and final study school. It has been fantastic working with them and we hope to keep in touch with them over the coming months and years. The theme for the week was mathematical justification and proof.

The last week in August heralded the arrival of the second cohort of Fast Forward students, who were in Cambridge for five days and will be returning just before Christmas.

Over August Jenny has been working on developing ideas around assessing pupil performance in process and, alongside this, identifying progression through process skills.

Liz Woodham - Primary Coordinator

Liz enjoyed working with Alf and Tracy, teachers from Kingsfield School in Bristol, in early July. They came to lead a meeting with all the NRICH team to begin to plan ideas for the November NRICH site. We worked on a problem together to get an insight into the way students at Kingsfield work on mathematics and we hope the November site content will reflect this.

On July 10, Liz attended a meeting of the joint ATM/MA primary subcommittee. Sue Pope from QCA led a discussion about the proposed changes to the primary curriculum and Liz has since completed the questionnaire in response to the public consultation. Later in the month, Liz also participated in a meeting of the MA CPD Committee.

A group of Y5 pupils from a school in Ilford visited the Centre for Mathematical Sciences in late July. They had questions for three university students, who are working with NRICH over the summer, and then had a go at some activities from NRICH with Liz.

Liz was fortunate enough to receive tickets for the University's 800th anniversary garden party for staff through the ballot system. It was held in the Botanic Gardens on a beautiful Saturday in July and was a very enjoyable event.

Over August, Liz tried to catch up on all the items on her 'to do' list that still hadn't been ticked off. She started to plan some trial sessions of web conferencing with a colleague and small groups of primary pupils, and she worked on the primary resources which will published on October's website.


Charlie Gilderdale

In July we contributed to the UKMT Teachers' Meetings

On the 3 July we hosted the final Teacher Inspiration Day in the current series. Teachers from four of the secondary schools that collaborated with us on the Engaging Mathematics for all Learners Project, and contributed to the QCA guidance document, took the lead running the workshops.

For information and an application form for the 2009-10 series click here.

Coordinated and taught on the third Fast Forward Study School which took place at the end of July. Read more about it here.

As usual, continued to develop Stage 3 resources for the website.

Steve Hewson - Post-16 coordinator

The main focus of July / August for Steve was working with 5 undergraduates and 2 sixth formers on the stemNRICH pages, which are planned for completion by December. Along with work on the Fast Forward Study Schools and Teachers Inspirationd Days, Steve gave a sessions on Functional Mathematics and a session on stemNRICH at the National STEM centre summer schools. Steve also worked on the preparatory material for undergraduate scientists who plan to come to study at Cambridge and gave a talk on Mathematical Thinking for the Cambridge Further Mathematics Network.

Steve's work directly for the Transkills project came to an and at the end of July.

In July and August there was a lot of work on the site, much of which will appear over the next few months.

Alison Kiddle

In July, Alison was invited to run a workshop at a Gifted and Talented Maths Enrichment Day organised through the Cambridge Independent and State School Partnership. Four groups of between 15 and 20 pupils from several Cambridge schools enjoyed working together on the problem Odds and Evens which led to lots of enthusiastic mathematical discussion.

Towards the end of the month, Alison ran several workshops at the final Fast Forward Study School. The theme was Justification and Proof, and preparation for the sessions has stimulated several ideas for problems which will appear on the website in coming months.

Alison spent a lot of time in August working on new content for the site, as well as preparing and running some sessions at the first Fast Forward Study School for the new cohort. In addition, she has been spending more time working on stemNRICH with Steve.


Past news ...