Lovely

Last Friday night I got a disclosure of the sort of abuse that you don't even read about in the papers - horrible things that nobody wants to know about it.

 

One kid, Lovely, in bottom set, is really bad at maths. She did 20 - 9, got 29 and was happy with it. She doesn't really understand any of the operations. I drew her rectangles on squared paper for times tables, 2 the same size, and we counted the squares in each, but different ways. She was surprised that we got the same answer, even though she knew they were both 5 squares by 8 squares. I'm helping her a little extra, because she wants to understand so badly and the funny thing is, she's doing well in most of her other subjects, and she just doesn't seem like a bottom-set kid. No diagnosed difficulties, very articulate and hardworking - why wan't she getting it?

 

After a few weeks of one-on-one, I worked out that she had somehow missed place value. She's never grasped it, and it had messed up every subsequent maths concept for her. But why? Surely they do that a lot at primary, how had she missed something so central? So I asked her. I said: it seems like you're missing a piece of the puzzle, from when you were very little. Does that sound right to you?

Yes, she said. Yes, because I didn't go to school much then.

Oh? How come?

Well miss, I wasn't allowed to go, because ...

 

You occasionally read about these things. Kids kept home from school to disguise abuse. It's even used (unfairly) as an argument against home education. But in the flesh it's completely heart-rending and incomprehensible. I have goosebumps and pricking tears even now from writing this, and the thought that she's lived with this in silence for so long, just getting on with it, never acting out, never having a clue what's going on in class because when those crucial concepts were covered, she was hardly there, and when she was present 'I didn't seem to concentrate all that well, Miss'. Her literacy has mostly recovered, but perhaps because of it's linear nature, her maths hasn't. And I am so angry.

Pirates

I've had enquiries about the piratical lesson, so here's what we did.

We'd looked at probability trees the previous lesson, and whilst they hadn't seen them before, they were pretty happy with them, so I gave them this puzzle: You've been captured by the dreaded pirate captain. He wants you to walk the plank, but some of his crew think you might be useful and want you to join the ship. To test your intelligence, he sets you this puzzle. (Being a pirate, of course, you can never be certain of succeeding; you just have to give yourself the best chance possible.)

He gives you 4 gold coins and 4 silver coins, and 2 identical bags. You must put all the coins in the bags, then place the bags on the deck. The pirate captain will pick a bag at random and then pick a coin at random from it. If it's a gold coin, you get to stay. (adapted from the wonderful TES)

They really went for it, and it was a good application of what they'd learnt. Have a go! Mathematicians who saw the solution instantly: how do you explain how you know that's the best option? I struggled a bit on that.

Then they made a pi paper chain, and the great bit about that was I gave it to my earliest finishers on the pirate puzzle to organise. I gave them 2 copies of the first 200 digits of pi, 10 piles of strips of coloured paper and 5 staplers. It was an interesting organisational problem, of the sort that kids often don't get to try in school, and they loved it.

Best of all, after everyone had hunkered down for the pirate puzzle, I heard one kid say very quietly 'How come maths is the fun lesson this year?' It's not all about the fun, but if the learning is fun, they'll learn more and retain it better. His test scores show me he's learning, so I'm delighted he finds it fun.

Creativity

This week I went to a mini maths conference, after school, with 20 maths teachers from my county. I went because my Head of Department (HoD) noticed my frustration with the lack of innovation and creativity in school, and wanted to help. He took me there and we actually got to talk about maths for the first time.

It was amazing. It was the first training event I've been to that I really felt was worth it, and it was worth it by a long way. I got so many ideas and resources that I'm itching to try out, and when we had to plan an activity based on what we'd been talking about, my HoD and I had so many ideas that it was hard to pick. We planned a pretty awesome activity, which ended up being extended to an entire lesson with the help of some other people, and which I'm going to trial on Tuesday. This is completely outside the scheme of work, but my HoD's not bothered. In fact, he's really excited, and we're meeting after the lesson to discuss it and talk with some of the other maths teachers at school about it.

I feel really re-energised by seeing 20 other maths teachers as excited and creative as I want to be. There were only a couple of NQTs, so I have hope that it's possible to sustain this level of enthusiasm and innovation. I realised how frustrated my HoD feels with the worksheet-teachers at school, and saw how supportive he is of new ideas.

His tolerance was further proven today when he walked into my top set lesson. The kids were all kitted out as pirates, making appropriate noises and walking round the classroom to consult with each other, on a massive problem solving exercise. It was pretty loud, but all the talk was about the maths. He looked at me, grinned, shrugged and walked on.

Compliment of the week

11 year old boy, apropos of nothing:

'You know, you're really not that old, miss. I mean, my mum's 37 and I think you're probably younger than she is.'

What's the point?

'The focus should really be on progress. People complain that the children don't enjoy my subject, and not many of them carry it on to GCSE or A Level, but that's not the point. That's not what OFSTED are looking for. Progress is what really matters.'

That's a direct quote from an 'expert' on an INSET day this week. It terrifies me. I'm all for not needing to be liked as a teacher, and not needing every lesson to be fun, and not sacrificing subject content for the sake of sheer entertainment, but if you're making students dislike your subject, to the extent that they don't want to carry it on, something is wrong. Statements like these, from professionals, make me think that all the Standards and OFSTED stuff about 'teachers should inspire a love of learning' is not being taken seriously. Of course it's harder to measure than academic progress, but we shouldn't chuck it out because of that.

I think, as a maths teacher, that it's massively important that students feel confident working with numbers, and not put off by them for the rest of their lives. Moreover, we may lose our best students from the subject if we take the approach that we don't care if they enjoy it as long as they're learning - the brightest will learn, but they'll drop it as soon as possible. Two kids who now have level 8 in year 9 told me at the start of the year that maths was their worst subject. We need more bright kids doing maths A level.

What about the gender divide? Stats suggest that girls are even more likely to be put off a subject than boys by a 'shut up and learn' approach, and their talents are more likely to be left undiscovered. We can't afford the gender gap in maths to grow any larger.

So much for the top end, what about the other side? If the weakest students don't enjoy maths, they will feel less confident and be even more likely to chuck in the towel and give up. We don't need their motivation to decrease any more - for these students, it will interfere with their progress, and that (so say these experts) is all-important.

Some kids are never going to like maths, say its detractors. Maybe. But we're losing kids who could like maths, at the top end where it's affecting the people we have in the subject, and at the bottom end, where it's affecting progress. Besides, I'm not so sure that some kids will never like maths. Let's try a bit harder before we say that, no?

In Blantant Disregard for the Healthy Eating Policy

To wrap up a topic on surface area and volume, I wanted to do something really exciting, and investigatory. It's not a topic that lends itself to that so much, as most of it is learning to correctly follow formulae (at the early KS3 level). I'd read Fawn Nguyen's post on doughnuts as great vehicles for this, and it seemed too fantastic an opportunity to miss. I messed with the lesson a bit, talking about models with the kids first (a cylinder inside a cylinder, or one long, bent cylinder?) and helping the weakest ones out with some of the rules they'd forgotten, but otherwise it was mostly the same.

The one thing the kids did differently to Fawn's, though, was that almost all of them wrote their calculations on the large sheet of paper I'd put the doughnut on. The drew lines by the doughnut and labelled them with measurements, and wrote their workings around them. I had a 'no touching the doughnut' rule, and they were really good at that, so the doughnuts stayed fixed until their estimates had been approved. They had to justify their estimates as well - I don't know it Fawn's kids had to do that.

The sheets looked really awesome by the end and they all took photos. I wish I'd got some, they'd be great for my display boards though I'm sure they'd make the other kids jealous! We did this 2 weeks ago, and already it is a legend around the school: 'The maths lesson that had doughnuts in!' I think that says something sad about maths lessons, mine and everyone else's. Clearly we can't reach doughnut-eating heights of kid enjoyment every lesson, but we should at least be trying to compete with that on a regular basis. It shouldn't be an event so massively out of the ordinary that everyone in school has now heard of it. So, what's as awesome as doughnuts?

A backhanded compliment

From a 13 year old, on parents' evening:

'I don't know why everyone says you're so bad, Miss - I think you're a really good teacher!'

Damaging Children

Random is 11 years old, but looks about 8. He has the concentration span of a goldfish, and the communication skills of a particularly frantic chicken. Unfortunately for health and safety, he also has the acrobatic ability and disregard for danger of a monkey, and the mental health of, well, Eeyore. Random is clinically depressed, and the combination of this with his constant twisting and turning and above all shouting his every fleeting thought neural impulse to the entire class, makes him an interesting character in a class of 31 without a TA because, believe it or not, this child is not statemented. He is, however, profoundly disturbed.

His behaviour has deteriorated since he arrived in September as he seemed to lose the few coping skills he had, and resort to gestures, shouts of anger and lots of throwing things whenever he didn't like a situation. He was expelled from 2 primary schools. In my class, if he understands the work and I stand next to him, he will work quietly, with occasional breaks to say exciting things to the poor child next to him ('Willy's elephant's having a baby.' 'I like to break my teeth.' 'Why do you love education?'). If I remove myself so far as a meter, however, he cannot cope and will do no work whatsoever, but start his acrobatics and shout to the entire class.

Last week I had him removed from my class after a rousing rendition of a speech that might be entitled 'This is What Gay People Do', accompanied with quite astonishing actions and acrobatics, because blatant homophobia in front of 30 other 11 year olds is too much. On other days he will actually fall asleep on the floor if left to his own devices even briefly. Today, he informed me that he was going to kill himself.

I am beyond worried for this child and the situation that has produced him, and the 7 younger siblings at home, all now diagnosed with communication difficulties. We are damaging him by putting him repeatedly in situations which he so obviously cannot cope with. I want to allow him his coping strategies, destructive as they are, because it seems so cruel to take even that away from him and punish him for it, but I am worried for the rest of the class. It is disturbing, as an 11 year old child, to be exposed to ideas, language and behaviour like Random's, and I have no idea what effect it is having on the other children. That is why I try to contain him, and remove him, when his shouting and actions dominate the class for minutes on end. What does Ankle Socks, sitting quietly and working away at the back, think of all this? What is it doing to her? Can I stop it?