Primary Teacher UK

Specialist Maths Teachers

The Government will invest £24million over the next three years to set up and begin implementing a major training programme for 13,000 existing primary school teachers to become specialist maths teachers over the next 10 years.

Mr Balls said he would raise maths standards in primary schools by paying specialist maths teachers up to £8,000 in incentive payments and rewards to train towards gaining a Masters in maths teaching.

In his review Sir Peter Williams calls for an urgent shift to reverse the "can't do attitude" to maths - he said today that he wants every pupil to leave primary school "without a fear of maths". The key aspects of the recommendations are:

There should be a maths specialist in every primary school in 10 years

• At least 1,000 maths specialists should be trained every year for the next 10 years so there is one in every Primary School in the country;
• This person should be a ‘maths champion’ and have deep mathematical subject and pedagogical knowledge;
• Implementation should commence in 2009;
• The programme should be targeted initially to narrow attainment gaps;
• Teachers should be offered an incentive to train as a specialist maths teacher and a one off payment on completion;
• There should be a fast-track training programme for teachers who have specialised in maths teaching during their training.

From a young age children should play with shapes, time, capacity and numbers

• The Review supports goals set out in the Children’s Plan to increase the proportion of graduate practitioners in early years settings;
• Children’s natural interest in numeracy, problem solving, reasoning, shapes and measures should be fostered from an early age;
• Children should be given opportunities indoors and outdoors to explore, enjoy, learn, practise and talk about their developing mathematical understanding;
• Children’s mathematical experiences must be fun, meaningful and build confidence. This will promote positive attitudes and deeply rooted learning;
• DCSF should commission a new set of materials on mathematical mark making and supporting children’s mathematical development through play are needed to support early years practitioners’ CPD.

All children should be competent in basic maths by the age of seven

• There remains a core of pupils who fail to achieve level 3 in mathematics by the time they leave the primary sector at age 11 and effective intervention at an early age could break this trend;
• Intervention for struggling children should happen before the end of KS1;
• Intervention should be led by a qualified teacher and should involve one child;
• Economic factors and social deprivation contribute to learning difficulties in all subjects, including mathematics;
• The use of video techniques in intervention should be investigated.

Children should do more mental maths in the classroom

• Too little attention is paid to building good attitudes to maths – there is a need for culture change both in and out of the classroom;
• The use and application of maths should be incorporated into the wider curriculum cutting across subjects to embed learning;
• A new focus is needed on the use of mental mathematics and would particularly help under-attaining groups of children;
• Teachers need to do more to stretch the most able pupils in maths with more open-ended problem solving tasks to help them see “big picture”;
• More needs to be done to kindle children’s interests - Jim Rose’s review of the Primary Curriculum should consider including the cultural and historical story of science and maths to generate interest in the subject

Parents should work with teachers and help foster their child’s interest in maths

• Parents’ attitudes to maths has a significant impact on their child’s numeracy skills;
• The “can’t do” attitude to mathematics in England needs to be urgently reversed;
• Activities such as cooking at home can help children learn and understand maths;
• Schools need to work with parents to dispel myths about the mystery of mathematics and give both children and parents a good grounding and positive attitude to this subject;
• Teachers should work with parents to bring them up to date with the methods used to teach mathematics currently;
• There is clearly a link between parents’ with low level skills and their children’s under-attainment in mathematics.

How do we solve the maths problem?

The British are uniquely happy to admit being bad at maths, says a report by the BBC. Why is that and how can attitudes change?

Imagine a famous television presenter joking that they couldn't read. It's an unlikely scenario, such would be their embarrassment, yet no such reservations exist for mathematics, with self-confessed innumerates popping up regularly.

"I've always been rubbish at maths" is usually accompanied by a cheeky grin. The subtext is "I'm no boffin."

A report this week by think-tank Reform laments the drop in numbers of people taking maths A-level, at an estimated cost to the economy of £9bn.

The report suggests that people are put off maths because they couldn't 'do' times tables at primary school. Surely, the role of the teacher and their enthusiasm for the subject raises the profile of a subject and ultimately raises standards?

Maths fun!

Here's a few more maths sites with some interesting resources on them - the first is useful for work with the gifted and talented pupils in your class.

www.mathsnet.net - This british site goes from KS3 up to A-Level but has some excellent puzzles and games that can be used with KS2. There is also a very good section on Logo and Spreadsheets useful for the relevant ICT units. For those more talented Year 5 and 6 have a look at the KS3 section.

Link: http://www.mathsnet.net

www.mathplayground.com - This is an American site - so we have grades instead of keystages and classes. The logic puzzles and games are the highlight to this site. The time flash cards are fairly boring, but enjoyed by children to see who can get the most right answers in 60 seconds.

Link: http://www.mathplayground.com

Tutpup

Tutpup have emailed me to mention their children's maths game site. They soft launched in the UK and initially schools were not even on their radar, but when one signed up 200 students in a day they had to do some rapid rethinking. The whole site and service is free to students and schools and unlike many other games sites they don't collect any personally identifiable data or act as a disguised marketing tool.

All of the games are competitive and head-to-head. The children create an account (Note they cannot use their own names. They choose a unique screen name, a combination of a colour, animal and number e.g. BlackDog10 or PinkSnail2) and then can then play against each other by putting in their username.

I've played the games online a few times now and I love them. It's not the most stimulating environment for asking questions but playing against someone else makes up for that.

Link: http://tutpup.com/

Interactive Clock

Being able to tell the time is an important and invaluable skill; it is essential to have a good understanding of time when learning history. To help cultivate these abilities 3D History have published an interactive clock on their web site and included some activities to develop these vital skills.

There are synchronised Analogue and digital displays. You move the hands on the analogue clock and the digital clock echo's the time. The time is also displayed in words. The digital clock and the words can be hidden to provide a very clean screen free from distraction.

The digital clock comes with an AM/PM indicator that you can switch on or off and also a selectable 12/24 hour mode.

Link: http://www.virneth.co.uk/apps/clock.htm

Mathsblog.co.uk

Mathblog.co.uk has been going for a few months now and is building up to be a useful resource. It is aimed at parents who are trying to support their children’s maths education at home, but is just as useful for teachers looking for worksheets and games. In particular there are hundreds of free maths worksheets for Reception to Year 6 plus a great selection of online interactive games for reception children to practice their counting and simple addition and subtraction skills. The aims of the site are threefold:

1. to provide free maths resources for primary children (age 5 to 11)
2. to provide independent information about maths resources, including books, software and sites on the internet, both pay and free sites
3. to provide up to date news about primary maths in the UK.

Have a look at http://mathsblog.co.uk

Mr Magorium’s Box of Tricks teacher downloads

There are some new KS2 fun resources for the end of term from the National Schools Partnership linked to Mr Magorium's Box of Tricks. The magical resources can be downloaded from www.nationalschoolspartnership.com/boxoftricksresource.

There are four booklets (all as PDF files) which can be downloaded: numeracy, literacy, magic and creative. Between the four booklets there is enough material to provide a whole weeks worth of work, finishing in a magic show on the Friday afternoon. What a great way to finish for Christmas!

Numeracy skills particularly important for disadvantaged children

Children from disadvantaged backgrounds who are given a good grounding in numeracy in infant school are more likely to succeed in English as well as maths at the age of 11, new research suggests. The key importance of numeracy for children from poor families has been highlighted by a study which tracked the progress of almost 10,000 pupils between the ages of 7 and 11. The study’s author, Kathryn Duckworth of the IOE, said that the “predictive power” of maths test results at age 7 was quite striking for disadvantaged children.

“It might be said that children from poor backgrounds who did well in maths at age 7 and then went on to get good results in English and maths at the age of 11 simply had a higher IQ but it is more complicated than that. I checked the children’s recorded IQ scores at age 8 and found that they did not provide the explanation. It is possible that doing well in maths at age 7 acts to heighten children’s self-confidence and aspirations. It may also encourage teachers to offer them more support, which then translates into successful performance at age 11. A good result in English at 7 is obviously essential too, but not quite as important for future progress.”

Kathryn Duckworth emphasised, however, that her research should not be used to justify separate educational “treatments” for particular social groups. Instead, it provided support for the Government’s policy of personalised learning. “Assessment needs to provide a rounded picture of children’s development and support learning as well as measure it,” she said.

Kathryn Duckworth’s study, "What role for the three Rs? Progress and attainment during primary school: Wider Benefits of Learning Research Report No 23", can be downloaded from http://www.learningbenefits.net/

Backpage

BackPage is a new website that you may wish to share with your parents.  The site allows parents/carers to share video tips about how to help the kids with Numeracy and Literacy homework.

Parents are always swapping advice at the primary school gates. - now do it online with bitesize video tips ranging from how to help kids learn numbers or crack timetables to simple ways of practising spelling or reading.

There's also a chance to win a behind the scenes tour of the BBC as well as other prizes for parents who send in a video tip.

Have a look and see what you think: http://www.bbc.co.uk/backpage/

E-Learning in the future

A new report released today by Whizz Education forecasts a huge increase in personalised home learning with technological advances propelling e-learning to be the principle education method in the subject of maths by 2020. The report is the result of a year-long trend study by leading author and educationalist Ron Van Der Meer.

E-learning has many years to go to reach its potential, which is to tailor learning to provide one-to-one education for all. Ron Van Der Meer says “The future is e-learning but not the kind of e-learning as it is done today, which is still in the first motorcar design stage when they took the horse away from the cart and stuck a motor on top.”

The main findings of the report include:

• Unlimited resources for teachers to decrease time spent planning and increase time spent teaching
• Advancements in technology creating resources which engage children at a higher concentration to be far more impactful than traditional models
• SATS and testing will be removed in favour of constant assessment
• Maths will be taught in a more pragmatic way, which will make sense to a child and can be seen to be useful and practical to their daily life and mixed up with other taught subjects
• Resources will be co-developed to increase skills such as Motor coordination, cognitive skills and memory development amongst others
• There will be a 5x increase in home learning influenced by changing attitudes to work, the role of the school in the community and climate change
• Personal, social development will play a greater role in the curriculum spurred on by diversity of religions
• Increase in commercially subsidised education

By 2012:

• A switch in Government and increased awareness of climate issues will bring about a massive change in the national curriculum. Eager to offset a decade obsessed with reporting structures for teachers, league tables and the testing of children the curriculum will place less importance on formal education and more on a holistic, all encompassing and practical education
• In Maths the curriculum will focus much more on practical applications for example probability. In context learning will be more about everyday maths and its uses
• Students will have ready access to downloadable materials with which they will be able to interact.

By 2020:

• By 2020 technology will have advanced to such a level that online and interactive will exceed anything we can now imagine. It will be sophisticated and a virtual tutor scientifically based
• Children will learn at the own pace alleviating discipline issues
• By 2020 it will be common-place to have a Robot teacher in the home
• The function of school will have changed significantly by 2020 and it will become more a central part of the local community itself offering a range of services for the community
• Old teaching is based on books, by 2020 all of these will be available digitally and some will be enhanced to include hologrammed lesson plans
• From all ages children will be much more economically savvy. Financial maths will be taught along the practical lines and cover areas such as taxation, inflation, pensions, mortgages and more

Additional research from Whizz Education  found that out of 1,000 parents in the UK who were questioned:

• 74% of people surveyed believe interactive web-based teaching resources with be the most influential factor in education by 2020. With the government coming in second with 16% and climate change and religious extremism in joint third place with 5%
• 74% believed there would be more home schooling in 2020
• 57% believe attainment levels will improve by 2020, 32% think they will be worse and 11% think they will not change
• 52% think class sizes will be larger by 2020, 32% think they will smaller and 16% believe they will not change
• 58% believe there will be less testing of students in 2020
• 100% of those questioned believe technology will play a greater part in lessons by 2020

For a full copy of the report please contact Carly Thornton or Helen Trevorrow on 020 8960 8950