Jonesieblog

Here’s what I would have said if I’d had more time:

I have grabbed one hour per week in an IT suite with my class of level B/C S2 mathematics pupils. We have spent some time using Tutpup, which has been good fun, and has caught the students’ imaginations. But it does not fill an hour per week – 20 minutes is about enough at one time.

The biggest success has been the work we have done on creating mathematical stories. We happen to have been using GoAnimate, but I think this would work just as well with Comic Life, Digital Video or any medium which has some depth of skill acquisition but delivers rapid initial gratification.

Here’s an (unfinished) example of one of the animations:

I am pleased with this project for several reasons:

The pupils are enjoying learning how to make animations. Enjoyment is sometimes a bit thin on the ground in maths for some of these students, despite my efforts to jolly things up, so I’m delighted to see them turning up early to the computer lessons, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

The pupils are experiencing success. Some students who find maths very challenging seem to see maths as being either babyish (their definition of the maths they can do) or impossible.  This project has enabled them to experience success at learning how to create animations, a task they consider to be cool enough to be worth mastering.

Pupils are learning from each other as they explore the functionality of goanimate. It has been delightful to see the pupils helping each other out as they learn.  I’m hearing things like “Paul [fake name] – how do you add that explosion?” or  “that’s cool, but the frame is a bit quick – here’s how you can slow it down a bit.”  These positive interactions have  definitely improved the atmosphere back in the maths classroom.

Pupils are actively considering real life applications of numeracy. I presented the students with a simple challenge once they had developed some basic skills with goanimate:  create an animation that shows how you use maths in real life.  I made it clear that animations without mathematical content would not do.  This led to some interesting discussions, and some great animations.

I have no idea yet how the rest of the year will pan out – please let me know if you have any bright ideas!  I should finish by saying that I have found most the web applications I have used this year through the blogs and twitter messages of my “personal learning network”.  They are a superb resource!

Stumble it!

As people all across Scotland are busy “re-imagining school education” I’ve been reflecting on my experience over the last 18 years as a secondary maths teacher, particularly on the two ways that classes have been organised over the years.

When I began teaching at Newbattle High School in 1990, S1 and S2 maths classes across Scotland were mixed-ability, and almost every school was using a resource called SMP Maths (my legendary PT Simon Smith at North Berwick being a rare exception). SMP consisted of a series of many small booklets, each of which taught a small bit of mathematical content. The booklets were only a dozen pages or so long, and pupils worked through them in a set order, at their own pace.

The big advantage of this system was that every pupil could engage with work at an appropriate level, and work at their own pace. The disadvantages were many: teachers spent hours marking tests and organising the booklets and very little time teaching; when they did teach, they could only teach one or two pupils at a time, as each pupil was potentially tackling a different topic from everyone else; and “at their own pace” often meant “at a snail’s pace”.

Maths departments tried to improve the situation by grouping pupils, and having them work together – setting within the class essentially – so that they could be taught in these wee groups.

The death knell for SMP came when folk from Scottish education visited the classrooms of the Asian nations which appeared to be outperforming us dramatically in mathematical achievement. What they found, amongst other things, was direct teaching from the front, and lots of it! This led to the Standards and Quality report in 1999 stating that S1/S2 maths courses needed “increased use of direct teaching of attainment groups.”

So we began setting in S1 and S2, despite the distinct lack of evidence that this would improve mathematical attainment. From my perspective, the advantages of setting have been: that classes can work together as classes, all learning the same outcomes together; that teachers can focus on one specific learning outcome for each lesson and teach the whole class directly; and that opportunities for pair and group work are greatly enhanced by the simpler organisation of set classes (the teaching is not running around like a headless chicken trying to keep track of 5 different topics at once). The biggest disadvantage is that lower ability pupils end up in ghetto classes which inevitably have more than their fair share of behavioural problems.

So… mixed ability makes it very difficult for maths teachers to teach in the old-fashioned sense of that word, and I think this is a big problem, because I still believe that one of the greatest privileges in life is to be taught by someone who is passionate about their subject.

Setting solves this problem but introduces the huge problems of social division and the reinforcement of low expectations amongst low achievers, and has yet to be proved to improve attainment, as far as I am aware.

Is there a third way?

Stumble it!

My blog posts have become rather sparse of late.  Twitter is largely to blame.  You can see what I’ve been up to by following me here:  http://www.twitter.com/jonesieboy.

Stumble it!