Maths Teaching Resources

Click here to go directly to the Maths Careers website.

 

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Read on for one teacher's experience of how he enriches his maths lessons for the students within the classroom, as well as working with parents to encourage them to share with their children how they use maths in their everyday lives.

Showing You’re Working; a project to encourage parents and alumni into STEM classrooms

 

A Background to the issues

Many areas within mathematics in school can be viewed by students as a dry body of knowledge unless it is given a context, and this is imparted by mathematics teachers, who are all too often confronted by “What’s the point of this, sir?”. As a Mathematics teacher of 16 years experience, I have been very fortunate to work with a very enthusiastic and supportive department, and in the past four years we have encouraged parents and former students to share their experiences of mathematics in the their daily lives. This in turn provides the students with a diverse series of anecdotes that enrich their lessons, much of which we would like to share with you in the form of a series of web links, video clips and downloadable documents.

Showing You’re Working; phase one involving former pupils

An outline of the project; found on the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM) website, within the “learning mathematics outside the classroom” section. This linked webpage provides a flavour of the initial project which took place in 2007 and 2008, and was the basis of an article for the IMA publication “Teaching Mathematics and its Applications”. Please click here to see the abstract.

In time the project gained recognition both locally and nationally, and as a part of the government’s More Maths Grads initiative, Kingswood’s mathematics department were able to film several former students at school and the video clips are now hosted both on YouTube and on the Maths Careers website. The link also provides an overview of the project; a booklet cataloguing over twenty case studies; several contributions from associates who have participated in the project; and see below a link to the second clip of the ex students speaking at school, which also has been included in the MMG More Maths in a Box which has been sent to all school in England and Wales.
  

 

Using particular examples

One of the contributors Mr Leslie Cram is a retired archaeologist and Museum Curator. He explained how he had used measurements from animal paw prints and tracks found in Roman floor and roof tiles to estimate the size of domesticated Romano British dogs. I was very taken with this idea, and contacted the local “Roman Baths” Museum in the centre of the city. They kindly loaned me a large piece of floor tile excavated from the site, with a pair of paw prints on it. Then Mr Cram visited the school and chatted to pupils about the size and shape of the impressions.

The students at school then set about trying to find out the size of the animal. This exercise was extremely rewarding, with statistical techniques such as line of best fit proving invaluable in this task. This subsequently became the basis of an article jointly authored by Leslie and myself for the Royal Statistical Society publication Significance, which was published in June 2010.

Phase two; involving parents

The first phase of the project detailed former students’ experiences, but in time the focus has shifted to include parents, and phase two developed more recently included a show and tell presentation encouraging parents to work in partnership with their children to enable them to deliver a short presentation in class illustrating how their parents use maths in their daily lives. I was very fortunate to be asked to speak at an NCETM national conference in November 2009 detailing this phase. If you are interested in finding out about our experience involving parents see the related document at the bottom of this page.

The NCETM conference in Nottingham showcased a number of themed “family matters” initiatives detailing a variety of projects that involved carers, parents and other family members in school mathematics. In January 2010, the Educational Guardian ran a special NCETM supplement which focused on this important area for development, and included an article detailing the Showing You’re Working; Alumni Project.

More recently a number of resources and associated items have been uploaded to the Mathematics page of Kingswood School’s web site. Follow the link to see some of the clips of our students’ presentations and parental contributions.

Currently I am using some of the examples inspired by our Alumni to work alongside members of the Bath Rugby Community Foundation to deliver a personal finance course to targeted youngsters within local schools, in addition to a collaboration with a parent who is involved in the manufacture and distribution of bio fuels to develop a STEM project which when completed will be available to other teachers here at Future Morph and also through the national STEM Centre. None of the examples we have used would have been possible without the inspiration that we have taken from the experiences of our former students and parents, and we owe them all a debt of gratitude. I must also recognise the work of the members of the department, who have embraced the initiative so wholeheartedly and embedded case studies and project material into the lessons they teach, thereby making the experiences of their students that much richer.

It is hoped that any resources created in the future can be disseminated here on the Future Morph website, to inspire other teachers to attempt similar ideas. If you would like to find out any further information about the project, or indeed if you have any STEM Family learning related experiences or resources you would like to share here at Future Morph or with the National STEM Centre, please contact me via my email address: Garrod Musto M.Phil. C.Math.Teach. FIMA.
 

 

Garrod is a Chartered Mathematics Teacher, and he leads Kingswood’s mathematics department. In addition he works within the community in Bath and the surrounding area, developing links between the school and outside agencies. He is an educational officer for Bath Rugby’s Community Foundation, and is also a Teacher Fellow working closely with Mathematics departments across the South West as a part of the HE STEM initiative. He is also a member of Council within the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, and serves on their schools and FE Committee.