One of the best websites for problem solving resources and rich tasks is median, which has resources written and collated by Don Steward, who died recently.
As my year 7 class have been experiencing a lot of mymaths and mathswatch recently, I thought we could try out having a go at a Don Steward problem, and we chose this one:
This year I have taken on a new role as a Teaching and Learning Lead. My main interest is Teaching for Mastery in secondary mathematics, and I have been very fortunate now to introduce a mastery approach into 4 different schools. In taking on the role I wanted to give serious consideration to staff wellbeing and workload. I think an enthusiasm for new teaching initiatives can cause an increase in workload for us teachers as we change our lessons and structures in order to meet new expectations.
I was fortunate (and I think brave) enough to attend the London maths event on problem solving. It was run on Zoom with the added twist that you could choose to have a blind date. I was paired with a lovely Scottish chap and we choose to use facetime to talk, and the collaborative whiteboard website bitpaper to share our work.
Trying to teach maths in the lockdown seems to be mostly about using external websites such as mymaths, mathswatch, hegarty maths and others. On the whole, students seem to like them – they used them before closure for homework and for revision, and it’s a cherished strand of continuity in a time of upheaval.
These websites offer a soothing reminder of the life before lockdown; you are doing your maths homework (even though it is now classwork) in exactly the way that you did before life changed so much.
Jon set an imaginative task during school closure to his Year 7 class: “Ask me two questions about what we’ve studied in this topic. If you feel confident you know everything, think of two imaginative questions you could ask a mathematician about negative numbers.”
Below some brilliantly imaginative questions, and Jon’s answers to his class. Will this work with any other topic?
What does the ‘FACT’ key on a calculator do?
I am going to share here a lesson I teach in the classroom and will then show how I have adapted it to be carried out by pupils by themselves at home during lockdown.
This works with the new Classwiz calculators (of any type) and the older versions of the fx-83, fx-85, etc.
I put the calculator under a visualiser and point out the ‘FACT’ command.
One of the problems with maths being a subject that everyone has to study is that lots of people get fed up with it. Some get fed up with it at primary school; others just don’t get on with algebra.
But there is a massive difference between school maths and maths.
In my last blog post I wrote about the sorts of mathematics parents and children might be able to do together and the ways we might be able to use different types of tasks to build mathematical thinking skills and reasoning. I finished by saying:
I’m not brave enough to suggest we abandon our curriculum but could we intersperse it with activities such as these? A week of videos and a week of alternative activities away from the screen. If it needs to be monitored perhaps a photo would do?
At the Cambridge Maths Hub we have been pondering our own response to this challenge and how we might be able to help.
Teachers are used to change. The way schools have adapted to the current crisis is breathtaking. Think back three weeks ago when there were only vague whispers of a shutdown and now we are confined to our homes, allowed out just once a day. Schools did not pause to take a breath. Without hesitation we have set up online learning with schedules for the day, directed students to appropriate websites, received instructions on how to monitor “attendance”, offer feedback, make adjustments to adhere to new child protection guidance .. it goes on.
Having now had two weeks of this I think it is worth pausing to reflect. How is it working out?
