The Sixty-Second Republic - Pop da pop pop, the beat don't stop until the break of term

[StaffRepFeistyClub]

You are most welcome to this school staff support thread to get us through stressful times. It is meant for school staff only – a sort of room of requirement for school staff to let off steam.

Baiters, haters, goaders, and bashers can jog on somewhere else.

If you are NOT staff and just have a general education query please start your own thread.

Do not give the staffroom password to non-staff as it attracts the wrong sort of crowd.

Other requirements for staff room entry include the ability to find the staff room, the ability to find a clean mug in the staff room, knowledge of the photocopier codes, and the ability to sniff out where the booze is stashed - Thirsty Tuesdays, Fizz Fridays now in operation. Do not sit on the chairs and do wear a mask. Finally, upload your covid test results twice a week on Wednesdays and Sundays.

[Mastery Maths is based on an approach used in Shanghai, but as we don't do the other bits e.g. Maths teachers only teaching in the morning and doing small group coaching every afternoon if a child doesn't 'get' the lesson objective, it's adjusted for the more English school day!]

Could their mathematical abilities be being nurtured?

Our maths dept set even though the rest of us aren't allowed 🤷‍♀️ The weakest kids are sent off for "intervention" by whichever member of staff is free when they have maths. It's rarely a maths teacher.

Not sure what the balance of calculator/non-calculator is in Scottish nationals.
Recently they've given ds a number square to use so I sense they have admitted defeat.

I went to a mastery workshop run by Mark McCourt and he's so passionate about the mastery approach - that a child doesn't move on until they've mastered the skill they are working on. Real food for thought. I wonder how it could be done in Secondary if not all children had taken that approach in Primary?

(Too many masters in that post ).

Technically, we don't set. We have a top set in each year half, and then mixed ability

We have a “top set” in year 9. Other than that KS3 is mixed ability. I find it really frustrating teaching kids content they won’t do at GCSE because it’s higher paper only and they will definitely be sitting foundation. I teach science.

I can see the benefits of mixed, but I find it a real struggle. Whoever teaches the two bottom sets for next years Years 10s has got their work cut out. Nothing is secure for those kids. For a few it will be like starting from scratch.

What's interesting about Mark McCourt is that he is also fine with setting for maths over mixed ability, despite the mastery approach.

@noblegiraffe

What's interesting about Mark McCourt is that he is also fine with setting for maths over mixed ability, despite the mastery approach.

Could you say a bit more about that, noble?

What do you mean?

Is it because he recognises that the maths mastery approach is a great idea - but not quite do-able within the U.K. system as it's currently set up?

D'oh. I mis-read that completely.

But ... yes, could you say more about McCourt, noble?

Long blog post here, Cat

markmccourt.blogspot.com/2018/01/mixed-ability-vs-setting.html

Dreaming White rose and all the mastery programs do the same. I know people have an issue (possibly rightly), but I do think this is an aspect that needs keeping even if everything else goes. It's infinitely preferable to the ridiculous Primary National Strategy that ending up teaching objectives for a couple of days every half term. I suspect the majority of schools might be using the blocks as a long term plan. There was a bit of a joke at work last spring when everyone's kids were doing fractions at school during home learning when our manager was about to stage a fractions/ratio intervention at work.

With the singapore maths thecatfromJapan, I think the other thing they do differently when teaching fractions is that they don't do fractions of numbers for at least the 1st year. It's all done using fractions of shapes and bar models. IMO Gove screwed it up with the NC. He sort of put the objectives in the right place, but then added finding fractions of numbers/quantities, presumably because that's what we'd always done.

Maths do group by h or f from y9, to be fair.

I've read about half of the blog, noble. It's fascinating. Thank you.

You know, I always think it's interesting that we have mixed ability classes in maths in Primary - where very, very, very few of us are actual Maths Specialists.

Honestly, it was amazing spending time in a school where maths was delivered by a maths specialist, with a maths degree, a degree in teaching, and an absolute passion for teaching and children's learning.

It was both a bit humbling - and also inspiring.

But most of us in Primary just don't have that in-depth knowledge of Maths. 🤷‍♀️

And time ... always time.

I do love White Rose and Maths No Priblem, though.

I think they're my favourite maths schemes.

Can’t contribute to the Maths chat (apart from to say by far the best and most inspiring tutor on my PGCE was the Maths guy, who was a bit like Johnny Ball - but deeper!) but have you seen, apparently (Twitter says) Matt H has left his wife, who was in ignorant bliss until Thursday evening? (Well OK she might have felt she hadn’t seen much of him in the last 15 months....)

Poor woman.

Yes, I read that about the wife being told on Thursday. Which seemed extraordinary.

It's weird: I saw the photographs of her, and the little Caroline Gardner dog key-chain she was holding - and felt so sorry for her. Which is bizarre. I don't know her and have no idea about what their private life was like. But the keychain just seemed so ordinary. The sort of little thing you buy to cheer yourself up when you're doing the whole family thing of being buried in other people's lives ...

I realised that I've read too many MN Relationships threads and was projecting madly ...

But I just can't shake it off.

And I passed an Oliver Bonas shop today - and it just struck me as so bizarre that a brand so synonymous with providing the accessories and assuagements for the blisses and disappointments of a certain kind of settled female life was caught up in all this. Utterly improbable - and kind of the antithesis of the brand identity.

Anyway, in seriousness, it all seems pretty unfair on her.

LOL That should be on the Matty H thread. We're far more serious on here!

At least you weren't posting on the 'I fancy Matty H' thread, cat

Half the school now popped.

I feel so sorry for Matt Hancock's wife and children. I hope she lawyers up and comes out of this with a great settlement and her head held high.

I'm teaching decimal arithmetic next week and love linking it to fraction arithmetic. Have really enjoyed the maths chat.

Dh has been away for a few days and I've had the best few nights' sleep in ages. No reports hanging over me has made the biggest difference.

Times tables aren’t helpful for people who can’t remember sequences, or who habitually reverse things. I never learnt mine (have realised after many years of teaching dyslexic children and having two myself that I am to a certain degree. I have theories about how dyslexia impacts on Maths in certain individuals, but doesn’t manifest itself in English). I found other methods of calculation.
I think that we like many mammals (there’s evidence of this) have an innate sense of number or quantity. It’s hard-wired in a way that reading or (particularly) writing isn’t (these are developments of other hard-wired attributes such as spoken language, shape recognition and motor skills). So Maths is in a different category of attributes from the get-go and most people can get by with the relatively limited Maths they need in everyday life, because they can use whole numbers, simple fractions (expressed as words) and approximation.
However the formal structures used to express and teach Maths are among the most complex learning concepts and processes we inflict on children, and we do this well before they develop the intellectual structures and processing skills to internalise them. I’m thinking of fractions in particular. The other thing that doesn’t come naturally is the decimal system. Fractions based on ten are not a natural way of thinking (fractions based on powers of two or powers of three are, basically things that are easy to draw). The decimal system was always aided by practical or mechanical devices (pebbles, the abacus) and though the way we represent it (use of 0 as a placeholder) is helpful to many for calculation purposes, it is horribly confusing for others whose eyes glaze over at the sight of lots of 0s and who never properly understand the function of the decimal point. Fir certain people, it’s not a system that supports mental arithmetic (though of course for others it’s fine).
Understanding this has helped me to successfully teach many people who struggled with Maths over the last seven years, by stripping everything back to the basics. I’ve been told many times “we don’t know how you do it” but when I’ve said what I do, and that needed more time with learners who weren’t getting there, no one listened. Consequently I felt it was time to go.

I’m late to the maths chat! We have a booster group which is different to a ‘lower’ set. They are students with identified needs and used to be called the nature group. We are moving to teaching them totally differently next year because they’re needs are so different to other groups.

We’ve been following a mastery style of teaching for a few years now - we haven’t got it totally nailed but we’ve totally stripped back our Y7&8 curriculum and those who teach the really weeks groups higher up at GCSE use a lot of this content which we’re finding is making a difference (they weren’t exposed to it lower down). It will be interesting to see if our weaker gcse groups have better grasp of the basics over the next two years as they will be the first to have been taught this way throughout.

I was lucky enough to spend two weeks in Shanghai and it was amazing but it did strike me that the amount of money they spent on our exchanges to see and try to implement the good practice is never going to be effective because as a country we just don’tvalue education/educators/spend the time and money needed on it in the same way.

I'd love to see how they teach in Shanghai, MrsHP. I read somewhere the teachers have around 35% contact time - is that true? And that class sizes are much bigger. Not the same, but it was a dream of mine to work in HK (or one of the big Chinese cities) for 3-5 years, when the dc were young. I wanted to immerse them in the culture and learn the language. Didn't happen, unfortunately and looks unlikely to happen in the future now.

I think y4 seems to have covered a lot of harder maths very quickly.
There is no way i was doing this at that age. Dc1 can do it. They did WR. But i think what was there at the time for methods is probably already gone. (Her memory is quite good).
So for maths i do think there isa need for tests and homework.

Having to do such hard stuff has really put her off maths i think.
The English too is definitely harder than I remember in primary, but luckily she enjoys that more.
She works slowly with maths and is easily distracted(possibly asd/adhd).