Pisa Tests and new ways of developing primary maths.

One thing really stood out for me in these tests was the survey of how much children enjoy school. This ran alongside the tests, and the results are generally the polar opposite of the performance in the tests. Those who enjoy school the most did not do well in the tests, those who enjoy it the least did the best.

I would be very interested to see how the lower performing countries rank against the higher performing ones academically for lifelong learning. I think we now live in a culture and society that embraces lifelong learning far more than any in the past. The generation before mine many of whom are retired now are being forced to learn new skills with IT. I remember my parents saying how hard it was to learn when you are older, I really do not believe this and think it was indoctrinated in the education system they grew up in.

There is already talk of training students purely for these inter-country ranking tests, clearly thought up by people who have no real interest in education, teaching to a test is far from educating, it is merely dictating. It is forcing acceptance without personal development and only requires students to follow instructions with no thought or understanding.

Something else interesting is our Governments devolution of the education system in England. Specifically within maths, Michael Gove stated he wanted algebra to be taught to primary school children, yet the high performers in the Pisa tests do not do this (see here). They develop an understanding of how numbers are built up before bringing in unknowns. We are told we must get the 'times tables' drilled into students at an early age. This is the worst way to inspire young minds to learn what I think is the most creative universal subject. The answers to the times tables are just a tool, they are not the foundations of mathematics hence anything built upon false foundations will not last. Understanding how they are formed is the key to inspiration in the subject, and the creative ways to answer simple to complex multiplications (and division).

For example, when I ask what is 12x13 younger (start of year 7) students claim they cannot answer this mentally as they only know up to 12x12. Some will be brave and go for 10x2 and 3x2 as they are able to split the calculation apart from experience. What I try to get them to understand is how 12 is formed in the first place, it is 3 doubled twice. So I tend to Triple a number (lower numbers are quite natural to triple quickly), then Double it and Double it again. This is mathematics, this is the creativity involved and this leads to algorithmic development, times tables do not!

Try it, as a parent or teacher you will probably know your 8 times table, stop thinking that way. 8 is 2x2x2. With this method you can do 231x8 in seconds and are not stuck past 8x12. You are no longer limited to the regimental thinking forced upon you in school.

231x8 = 462x4 = 924x2 = 1848 This is the formal maths.
Mentally I just bounce, doubling doubling and doubling.
Try things like this for starter activities, or fillers for those with 100minute lessons.

Another example is the 5 times table. This I think of as the 10 times table halved (halving is a quick mental process, as is 'thirding'). Mentally the 5's are easy to remember, but what is 231x5?
Well it is easy to see 231x10 is 2310. So half of that is 1155.

The depth of learning mental multiplication this way is endless, it leads to understanding of Prime Factors, to understanding HCF and LCM, to Indices and Standard Form, ultimately leading to Calculus. What I ask the GOVErnment to do is to ban times tables teaching from the maths curriculum. Times tables do not develop thinking skills, they are repeating without understanding and are just slow and laborious to use.

I have made my opinions perhaps an exaggeration of the real truth here to spark debate. I do not know the answers to this problem, but my instinct knows I developed a much better understanding of Mathematics when I stopped thinking in times tables. 

Google Certified Teacher Action Plan part 1

This is just a quick post about few ideas that I will develop into my action plan.  I am already missing the energy that we were enveloped by at Google, and I only left an hour ago.

My initial thoughts for my action plan were to develop a full mathematics topic using all of the Google apps. With sites as the main hub,   YouTube as a navigator and forms for assessment.  This though is no different to what I will start to do in the classroom.  My second thoughts were to start a channel or group to bring together all of the different ways maths is used throughout the modern world,  and possibly the past.  Perhaps I will be able to combine my two ideas,  I need some time to play with all of the new apps and functions I have learnt about before I make any decisions.

Thank you to both Google and IPACA for this opportunity.

Google Certified Teacher

This is going to be a brain dump......

I feel like I have taken in so much information that right now I cannot see the wood or the trees, I can't even see the earth they are planted in. There are so many things that I did not know about the facilities that Google provides through its services. For example I was not really a fan of Google Sheets as I liked being able to mail merge etc. with my openoffice application, and when forced to also within Excel. I treated it as a little online brother to a real spreadsheet package.

This is now all out of the window, all this and more is available in Google Spreadsheets, its quite easy to mail merge and then automatically email people from this. (there is something else I wanted to write about sheets but my head is now full of maps)..edit...remembered it....the functions are much easier than other software, they make sense and have been simplified, less clicks and highlighting, easier to create averages makes it easier to analyse data. The data can be seamlessly linked into other presentation forms which leads to cross curriculum teaching in a real world way. We can do a survey or experiment, analyse it in maths and science statistically, look at the data a different way in humanities and geography and present it for business models.

There are so many different ways to use google earth and maps for data analysis, which we can then analyse in spreadsheets, we can do surveys in Google Forms, map them, analyse them with either data or space topics (this is what I did in an old job as a site assessment manager for the Co-op, in an application that cost £1000's with data that cost £10,000's, all for free!)

Right now I feel like I could set up the most powerful marketing company the world has ever seen, without spending a penny, I can see how we can use this for huge projects to teach with. How we can make investigations that are real and will impact on students futures in jobs that have not yet been invented or discovered.

There are Twitter links I sent to different departments at work that already look better than any resource I have ever seen and we have 1:1 Chromebooks at IPACA which makes it all easier to do all of this.

I think I need sleep, I need hours to be created after the sleep before the 'Unconference' tomorrow so I can try to compose my thoughts, I also need to go on a diet. The food today was top class, breakfast was top quality, I overfilled at lunch with the selection on offer, then topped it up at the celebration dinner with what I thought was a snack. This was washed down with very nice wine and a couple of cheeky Glenmorangies with many of the other GTCglers.

For me right now the best part of the day was talking to so many different people from around the world, all with different experiences yet with a common goal, to enrich the lives of anyone who wants to learn more.

I do apologise for the erratic nature of this post, it is a reflection of the day, and I love that method of learning. I can focus on specifics over time. Tomorrow looks to be even better.

Congratulations to all who were there today, I am looking forward to the ideas that will come tomorrow.

Training yourself to teach or learn by investigation.Part 1

I was trained at Keele university by some fantastic mathematicians. They were able to direct investigations of even the most simple of concepts through to degree level maths. To this day I am still attempting to repeat this process, I am sure they had the advantage as we were all on a course to learn how to teach maths, so all able at the subject and confident in our abilities.

Simple maths under pressure

This is a great little resource for anyone.

Plans, plans and more plans #GTAUK

What am I looking for from the Google Teacher Academy?

Google Teacher Academy

Following an invite to attend the next Google Teacher Academy in December 2013 London, I feel motivated and compelled to start what has lingered at the back of my mind for years. I am a teacher of Mathematics at the Isle of Portland Aldridge Community Academy in Dorset, England.