I saw that on a Numberphile video...

Last week, I was listening to a couple of year 7s discussing maths in class when I heard one of them say, "I saw that on a Numberphile video..." This was one of the highlights of my term because the video in question was not one I had promoted to the class. This term, I have introduced Google Classroom into my teaching and one of the excellent uses is to subtly promote Numberphile and other fantastic mathematical resources.

I'm going to go out on a limb here. I think Numberphile is the most inspirational resource I have seen for Mathematics. By using youtube, Numberphile has opened the door to complex Maths that to this point remained hidden deep and difficult to find for the vast majority of people. It is ground-breaking and has the potential to be as influential  as Martin Gardner's work in bringing maths to the masses and deepening understanding of Mathematics beyond basic numeracy. It goes way beyond other attempts to open up mathematics, such as Johnny Ball in the UK, who promoted mathematics in an entertaining manner, but failed to look deeply and demystify the subject. Numberphile embraces the complexity of mathematics and challenges the grey cells, and with the creation of Numberphile 2 (with its focus on the 'hard' maths) this looks to continue strongly.

A big thank you to Brady Haran (producer, editor and thoughtful interviewer of the Numberphile videos) and the inspirational contributors, including the fantastic and amusing Dr James Grime and Matt Parker (two of the main contributors to the channel). Dr James Grime has his own youtube channel singingbanana, which is full of mathematical gems. Matt Parker has been touring the country with the best show ever, Festival of the Spoken Nerd, his talk on spreadsheets zooms into the heart of computing and mathematics.

Other excellent youtube channels for maths include:
Vi Hart
Smarter Every Day (although there is some Science in this one as well!)

Book Review - 1089 + All That by David Acheson

David Acheson has written an excellent little book about a journey into mathematics. This book is an ideal read for any teacher or student. It is an excellent holiday read to maintain and top up mathematical knowledge. 1089 is written in short passages, making it easy to read but doesn't shy away from some relatively complicated mathematics and contains some gems of mathematical insight. Amazingly, this small book deals with a whole range of topics from pi to chaos theory.

Reading List for New Maths Teacher

I was asked recently what I thought would be a suitable reading list for a new UK Maths teacher. Below is my list. Have I missed anything out?

General Teaching:

• "Teach Like a Champion", Doug Lemov 
• "Mindset", Carol Dweck 
• "Why Don’t Students Like School", Daniel T Willingham 
• "An Ethic of Excellence", Ron Berger 
• "The Hidden Lives of Learners", Graham Nuthall 
• "Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn", John Hattie 
• "100 Ideas for Secondary Teachers", Ross Morrison-McGill 
• "Teacher’s Tookit", Paul Ginnis 
• "Trivium 21C", Martin Robinson 
• "Adapt", Tim Harford 
• "The Secret of Literacy", David Didau 
• "The Behaviour Guru", Tom Bennett 
• "How to Teach", Phil Beadle 
• "The Perfect (Ofsted) Lesson", Ian Gilbert 
• "Teacher Proof", Tom Bennett 
• "Getting the Buggers to Behave", Sue Cowley
• "The Lazy Teacher's Handbook", Jim Smith
• "How Children Learn", John Holt

Shaun Allison has created an excellent CPD video library


Mathematics:

• "The Elephant in the Classroom", Jo Boaler 
• "Alex’s Adventures in Numberland", Alex Bellos 
• "Taming the Infinite", Ian Stewart 
• "Murderous Maths" series by Kjartan Poskitt
• "The Perfect Maths Lesson", Ian Loynd
• "Adapting and Extending Secondary Mathematics Activites", Stephanie Prestage & Pat Perks 
• Collection of Professional Development Materials for Maths Teachers by Mark McCourt at Emaths
• Cockcroft Report 1982 
• "Getting the Buggers to Add Up", Mike Ollerton
• "Key Ideas in Teaching Maths - Research-based Guidelines for ages 9-19", Anne Watson, Keith Jones, Dave Pratt
• "Nix the Tricks", Tina Cardone and MTBoS
• "How Children Learn Mathematics", Pamela Liebeck
• Collection of Publications by Professor Malcolm Swan
• "Children Discover Arithmetic", Catherine Stern
• "Understanding Mathematics for Young Children", Derek Haylock
• "1089 and All That", David Acheson
• Debates in Mathematics Education, edited by Dawn Leslie and Heather Mendick, for the more reflective practitioner

La Salle's National Mathematics Conference

La Salle's National Mathematics Conference for Secondary and Primary Teachers, Kettering Saturday 14/6/14 - Sponsored by AQA 
#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

Assessing Without Levels - David Thomas and Alan Gothard (both from Westminster Academy)

Westminster Academy's mathematics curriculum has beed designed around three principles:

1. Break the curriculum down
2. Define it with questions
3. Use Analogue Data

The curriculum is split into discrete topics e.g. adding and subtracting decimals. Per year, there are 15-20 topics and each one is assessed individually. For clarity, the topics are defined with questions from three categories: Use & Apply, Reason, Interpret and Communicate, and Solve Problems.

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.

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. 

1. Minimally Different Examples - questions where just one variable changes. 
2. Trickle Feeding - a little bit of the same every day.
3. Building Automaticity - practising the basics until perfect.
4. Splitting the Steps - and practice each in turn
5. Take the first step last

Bruno introduced his product, Times Tables Rock Stars

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.

La Salle Education Conference materials - presentations and handouts.

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. 

Thank you Mark, La Salle and AQA.

PS Cakes were amazing!!!!

Maths isn't *just* beautiful... #mathsconf2014 pic.twitter.com/bVdj7YiEtf
— Em (@El_Timbre) June 14, 2014

Math Bites with Danica McKeller

Math Bites on the Nerdist Youtube Channel - a quirky and light-hearted set of youtube videos on Mathematics, starring Danica McKeller

McKella studied at UCLA and earned a Bachelor of Science with honours (summa cum laude) in 1998. As an undergraduate, she coauthored a scientific paper with Professro Lincoln Chayes and fellow student Brandy Winn entitled "Percolation and Gibbs states multiplicity for ferromagnetic Ashkin-Teller models on ". Their results are termed the 'Chayes-McKeller-Winn theorem'. Referring to the mathematical abilities of his student coauthors, Chayes was quoted in The New York Times as saying, "I thought that the two were really, really first-rate." McKellar's Erdos Number is four and her Erdos-Bacon number is 6. (source: wikipedia)

1. The Pi Episode - Join Danica McKeller as she explains the joys and mysteries of the wonderful world of Pi!

 

2. Math Head: DO MATH IN YOUR HEAD!

3. Binary Numbers. Danica McKeller demystifies the 1's and 0's of binary numbers

4. Percents: explains percents and the value they have in everyday life

5. World Math - Mathematical concepts may be universal, but the mathematics around the world varies.

6. Dance of the Sugar Pi Fairies - it's pi like you've never seen before! Look out for Simon Pegg...

McKellar has written a number of books on mathematics, mainly designed to pass on her love of mathematics to girls. Titles include: "Girls Get Curves: Geometry takes Shape", "Math Doesn't Suck", "Kiss my Math" and "Hot X: Algebra Exposed"