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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
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.
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NRICH is part of the family of activities in the Millennium Mathematics Project, which also includes the Plus and Motivate sites.
email: nrich@damtp.cam.ac.uk
