La Salle's National Mathematics Conference for Secondary and Primary Teachers, Kettering Saturday 14/6/14 - Sponsored by AQA
#mathsconf2014
#mathsconf2014
My Notes and Reflections
Mark McCourt - Chief Executive, La Salle Education
Mark introduced La Salle's new mathematics product, Complete Mathematics. This provides complete support for mathematics teachers by providing them with help with planning and assessment. I look forward to investigating this in more detail in the next couple of weeks.
Keynote speaker, Dr Vanessa Pittard, Assistant Director, Curriculum and Standards, DFE
Dr Pittard began her talk with an analysis of the PISA results for Mathematics in the UK. (Key findings for the UK). English students are good at data and number, but need to focus on shape and space, and problem solving. Not sure why then, the weighting of Geometry in the New GCSE is reduced?
Dr Pittard moved on to discussing the new Maths Curriculum and how it is benchmarked against high-performing jurisdictions like Singapore and Massachusetts. The new A-level Mathematics will be introduced in 2016, along with the Core Mathematics qualification for post-16.
The New GCSE - Andrew Taylor AQA
Andrew Taylor provided a comprehensive introduction to the new Maths GCSE and gave an overview not just from AQA but all the exam boards.
The GCSE will be writtten papers only. Exams will be linear and summer exams for all. November entry is only available for post-16.
The papers will be 4 1/2 hours long and split 1/3 to 1/2 between calculator and non-calculator papers. Foundation Tier and Higher Tier remain (no return to the intermediate tier). Grades are from 1-9 (9 being the highest). Foundation Tier 1-5 and Higher Tier 4-9 (there is a safety net grade 3 on the higher-tier).
The Mathematics GCSE will carry a double weighting in the new accountability measures. (See Factsheet on Progress 8). Andrew described the new GCSE as a "Maths GCSE on steroids".
AQA have split the time allocation into 3 papers each 90 minutes long. The first paper in a non-calculator and the other two are calculator exams.
The big news about content is there is a large shift towards Ratio, Proportion and Change (largely at the expense of Geometry and Measure), which a number of people in the audience felt aggrieved about. Both the Higher Tier and the Foundation Tier will be skewed more towards the top grades than currently.
More information see Craig Barton's blog
More information see Craig Barton's blog
Assessing Without Levels - David Thomas and Alan Gothard (both from Westminster Academy)
Westminster Academy's mathematics curriculum has beed designed around three principles:
- Break the curriculum down
- Define it with questions
- Use Analogue Data
Data is used to create an Assessment for Learning rather than an Assessment of Learning model. Rather than an approach of can they do this? Yes or No, analogue data is used (a percentage score) so it is easier to define the students level of mastery. Data is collected and weighted from small quizzes (40%), homework (20%) and end of term tests (40%). This leads to clear reporting to parents of what their child's strengths and weaknesses are topic by topic.
The main advantages of this system is that it can highlight when an individual student's performance drops or when a member of staff might need support with teaching a particular topic.
What I liked about this system is the simplicity and clarity it provides to students, parents and teachers. It is far more practical to report on how a students is progressing in particular topics though out the year, rather than focusing on meaningless sub-levels.
For more information, read "Assessing Without Levels" blog by David Thomas including presentation given at Conference.
For more information, read "Assessing Without Levels" blog by David Thomas including presentation given at Conference.
Blindingly Obvious - Bruno Reddy, King Solomon Academy
Bruno's work is highly influenced by the Cognitive Scientist, Daniel T. Willingham (author of "Why Don't Students Like School?"). Why do pupils get stuck? Their working memory runs out of space. On average, people can have 7 working memory slots. However, some students may only have 4 and three of these might be taken up with listening/speaking, writing and remembering.. It is therefore important to reduce the amount of pressure on the brain.
King Solomon Academy focuses on mathematics. Students receive between 6 and 7 1/2 hours per week of lessons on mathematics. Classes are taught as mixed ability form groups and it is the teacher which moves classroom rather than students, to reduce transition time.
The curriculum focuses on longer studying fewer things. In year 7 in particular, a lot of time is focused on the foundations of maths, number and place value. Some of the more complex areas of the KS3 curriculum and left until KS4. Similar, but confusing, concepts are separated e.g. area and perimeter or median, mean and mode.
Blindingly Obvious refers to how they approach lesson planning. The pitfalls of modern day maths textbooks and worksheets are highlighted.
- Minimally Different Examples - questions where just one variable changes.
- Trickle Feeding - a little bit of the same every day.
- Building Automaticity - practising the basics until perfect.
- Splitting the Steps - and practice each in turn
- Take the first step last
A challenge was also laid down to beat the KSA's World Record for the largest number of people rolling numbers
For more information see Mathematics Mastery.
My personal reflections - this was a fantastic day. Managed to get up to speed in latest developments in the Mathematics Curriculum. Listened to inspirational Maths teachers, Bruno Reddy, David Thomas and Alan Gothard. Finally, got to meet some amazing people and put names to twitter handles - El_Timbre, MakeMathsMatter, Just_Maths, Ms_Kmp and missradders. My only regret is I couldn't see the other speakers. Wow. What a fantastic day.
Maths isn't *just* beautiful... #mathsconf2014 pic.twitter.com/bVdj7YiEtf
— Em (@El_Timbre) June 14, 2014
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