Will having Honours Maths in the Leaving Certificate make you a better Maths teacher in Primary school?

On the face of it - 'NO'!  Second Class and I will not, any time soon, be exploring this:

Solve the simultaneous equation:

 X + Y +  Z = 16

  5/2X + Y + 10Z = 40    

2X + 1/2Y + 4Z = 21

                                                      

           

On the other hand the ability to reason, think conceptually, problem solve, sequence, think in the abstract and apply rigorous proofs - well those skills will never go amiss in a classroom.

So maybe the answer is 'YES!'

Or maybe we are asking the wrong question.

If you are as old as I am and remember back to the introduction  of the 1999 curriculum and the amazing buzz created around Maths.  The professional development courses which accompanied the curriculum changes set us alight with ideas and we all returned to the classrooms as reformed Maths teachers. 

We didn't need Honours Leaving Certificate Maths to teach the new curriculum.  We needed time, willingness to change, leadership and professional development. 

And we needed it to be ongoing.

Out with the books!

In with the manipulatives!

But it didn't last.  Slowly we drifted back to the ways of old.

'Quiet please.  Take out your Maths books.'

(Groan from class)

So what can we do now?

Re-introduce the centrality of  continuous professional development.  If you are reading this you are a Twitter user and therefore regularly connecting with your world wide Personal Learning Network to develop new thinking and use old and new, tried and tested, crowd sourced Maths teaching strategies.  

The Department needs to get in on this - embrace the changes, encourage, share know how and generally show leadership.  And the great news is that crowd sourced Personal Learning Networks are free! 

We need an IT curriculum from the early years.  

Children should be taught in  a structured, hierarchical  In my school we introduced extra curricular IT and coding.  Parents lined up to explain that their child was already a computer genius.  But the truth is that most children are genius at gaming. They have a lot to learn.  Children who develop programming or coding skills develop Maths skills in tandem.  They also learn that failure means 'keep going' and  that requires perseverance and resilience - and all teachers know important those skills are especially when it comes to problem solving in Maths.

There is a cultural and familial context for Maths.  

Parents regularly come to me and ask,

 'How can we help with maths?'

They quite often and self consciously add that they weren't much good at Maths themselves or they hated it or they had a terrible teacher.  And I say 'Yeah!  Me too!'  And then I ask them questions such as:

Does your child set the table at home?  Do you pair off the knives and forks?  Count the plates?  Work out how long it will take to cook dinner and what else could be done in that time?

Do you play board games regularly?  Do you ensure that your child loses sometimes?  Yes, loses. 

Do you sent them upstairs with a list of things to bring down?

Take them to the supermarket and discuss the value, size, expense of an item?

Do they ever have to work out the change?  Do they know what change is? (I've discovered a lot of children more readily understand the concept of 'cash back'!)

I could go on forever.  Maths in the form of sequences, time, numbers, strategies, failure, is all around us.

But, quite often, parents really want to know

 'What book can I buy to improve his Maths?'

'Books are important, I reply, 'they are what you use for practice when you understand the concept.'

Give more time and resources to Maths in schools.

Fact: Up to 30% of Finnish students receive extra help with Maths in the early years. As an experienced teacher I can see how that works.  It's simply a matter of one teacher not being enough at times.  Not just in the explaining, support mode but also in assessment.  Getting down and dirty with Maths, using manipulatives and IT each and every day, differentiating teaching and learning must all be observed, conclusions must be drawn and action plans for improvement made. I frequently tell the story of the student who made it to fifth class, getting good results in Maths but had no understanding of base 10.  Could add, subtract, multiply and divide with aplomb but had no concept of tens and units.  It mattered.  Because when it came to adding and subtracting Time - where base 10 is not the default concept - she simply couldn't do it.  And since she was doing so well - on paper - no one noticed her lack of basic Maths' knowledge.

                                                             30% extra help = SUCCESS

Teachers need to plan for change too.

How often do we education professionals, working in the field of small children and adolescents  equate complete quiet in the classroom, books on the table, pencils in hand and look of puzzlement on faces with success in the classroom?
We shush the children into complete quietness, getting a glow of satisfaction when they are all doing their book when the maths classroom should be buzzing with activity and conversation.  

There is a time for quiet work with the books - when the learning is done.

The HOW TO of greater success in Maths is easy.  

Honours Maths imposed from the top?  Naw!

Let's have some Honourable Action from the bottom up!

Why every child should do religion

For the second class I teach religion is one of their favourite subjects.  We light the candle and immediately fall quiet. That moment is in stark contrast to so much of our day. We settle in, listen to each other more respectfully and even the quietest amongst us shyly proffers a little something.  Indoctrination to any great extent - well I don't see that as my role.  I leave that to the experts.  For First Communion, to take an example, each dioceses has a perfectly good system parish based programme with the greater emphasis rightly on the links between home and parish.

So what do the children get out of religion class?  What do we get out of it together?

Religion class is great for a chat, a walk down memory lane, glimpses into the future, to find out something about someone that we didn't know before.  All of us get a great sense of ourselves and of others - and that's impossible in Maths class! In fact there is little other chance to encourage reflection and meditation at school or at home.
For that little while there is great warmth among us and for me an overwhelming sense of having facilitated some good.
If our class never went beyond that  - well that would be enough.  But there are more reasons to study religions, many, many more than reasons not to.

"That is God."

"-What?" Mr Deasy asked.

"-A shout in the street," Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.

Ulysses, Chapter 2

A knowledge of religions underlies the understanding of great literature, art and of ancient cultures - Yeats, Joyce, Shakespeare (just in English), Michelangelo, Caravaggio, the Egyptians, - the list is as long as the history of the human race.
To know the cultures of others - their art, literature and beliefs - is to find a cultural context for themselves in this crazy world where all certainties are up for grabs. Symbols - as simple as a supermarket candle-  guide the way to the more complex symbolism each and every one of us encounters, every day.
From a young age all children should also come to see that all religions bear some responsibility historically and now, for wars, inequalities and bigotry.

And whatever our creed the impulse to give thanks and to forgive is profoundly human not religious.

Our little democratic ritual - everyone gets to light the candle at some point - has fostered a love of ritual, again so culturally important and personally enriching.  

We wouldn't be without it!

Time to Crack some Holiday Eggs?

• Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/midiman/125332356/

Just a thought or two on the Easter holidays.....why are they at Easter?
The advantages to year on year fixed term times between Christmas and Summer surely should prompt a rethink.  Isn't it is time to rid ourselves of a pre-secular, pre-industrial not to mention pre-tech societal footprint on our increasingly demanding school year?
Most children know little of agricultural life other than it involves cute baby lambs - but their school year is still defined by it.  Likewise they know more about the life and times of the Easter Bunny than the birth and death of Jesus. Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, Easter is now a commercially driven, fortnight long chocolate fest.
Teachers and students would benefit from a planning calendar with defined lengths to each term - and for the long stretch from Christmas to summer to be sliced in two depending on the appearance of the first full moon after the March equinox has no educational foundation whatsoever.  Following this pattern - laid down in 325 A.D. -   makes a mockery of the science of learning.
For older students - and their teachers -  taking state examinations in early summer the psychological effects of a short summer term after a late Easter are enormous and potentially quite detrimental.
Younger students would also benefit from a more predictable rhythm to the school year.
Taking the holidays out of Easter doesn't mean taking the Christianity out of the school programme  - the Easter story will retain its importance for those who choose so.
It is a change long overdue - and it's hard to make an omelette without cracking some eggs !

Making Kids Cheer for Irish

Selfies -as Gaeilge!

In our school we collaborate endlessly -mostly online- to make Irish fun, relevant and productive. Early on in our efforts, which began a number of years ago, we vowed to adopt only student centric lesson plans and to critique every idea we have on that basis and that basis alone.  We also vowed to review all lessons -if they don't work for the students then they are unceremoniously dumped.  The fact that we work so much online means each of us can add and subtract from lesson plans at will.  If I have a brainwave over breakfast - well the iPad is never far from hand.  We post comments, look at changes each of us have made and ensure the progression of a topic up through the years.
It makes for pretty seamless Irish language teaching and learning - or for any other language for that matter.  
This week we wrote stories about ourselves - the usual 'Mé Féin' scéal.
Except we called them 'Selfies -as Gaeilge'.
Ah, rebranding - it really works.
Then it was out to the yard with our 6 iPads and working in groups, each student had their few minutes of fame - relayed back to them in technicolor glory on the big screen (the whiteboard).  
They were all totally engaged.  The mere facts they were holding an iPad and making a video were worth many thousands of words.  We encouraged them to dress up for the shooting and to use props relating to their hobbies.  They brought anything from riding crops to camogie sticks. 
In short, it worked.

Ten Year Olds are Wowed by 3D Printers!

Sited on back to back campuses our moderately sized primary school enjoys a special relationship with Ireland's largest university.  For many students a journey which begins in our Kindergarten ends in that very university.
We don't exist in its shadow, we exist in its promise.
This week our computer study class - enthusiastic Scratch addicted 10 year old boys and girls - were invited to the university to see some 3D printers in action.
We descended like a cackling flock of hungry geese on the hushed halls of academia whose tenants were kind enough to smile at our enthusiasm.
Ushering us into a conference room, they judged the moment just right and immediately delivered the wow factor - the printers were already humming.     A scaled model of the Sydney Opera House, a button and some letters of the alphabet were scattered on the tables.
Then followed a brief demonstration on how to use SketchUp to design a 3D form, send the design to the printer software and begin the printing process.
Within minutes children who love to groan at the very mention of a Maths book were using virtual protractors, measuring angles, calculating millimeters, trying out circles for the size of their radii and transforming 2D shapes to 3D forms.
Then to have the opportunity to export those designs to the printer - well the sky's the limit!
I see a bright future for 3D printers in education - transforming what can be a very flat model of skills acquisition into one of many dimensions.