This project ended a while ago. I am aware that this has been a very neglected blog. I am now a qualified MaST Specialist and use my skills with colleagues on a regular basis. I guide my work mates through many aspects of maths. At some point, I will upload some highlights of my more […]
The title here implies I’m about to write something about pendulums, however, it’s more to explain why there has been such an absence of posts from recent MaST work. The main reason is that I have just moved house, and other factors are an increased work load lately as well as a distinct lack of […]
Below are the general responses to the questions posed – I recap the questions and the views are generalised notes from talking to a range of teachers from nursery, through Key Stage 1 and 2. I provide the detailed breakdown of two colleagues from Years 3 and 4. Throughout these you can see that fractions is a […]
Image via Wikipedia The main reading for this study block (linked below) is a tricky and detailed account of current teaching relating to angles. It’s main findings are that not enough is done to develop the concept of ‘turn’ with children – that an angle can be defined at the amount of turn from one position to […]
The discussion at our last MaST meeting about parallel axes of reflections lead me to think about this a lot. And it wasn’t until I sat down with some paper and drew things that I could see it clearly. At the last meeting, we looked into exploring reflection using a skipping rope and children mirroring […]
Having just finished my work with a bunch of Year 3 – who are far fussier than I remember – I feel quite pleased. They were able to build and complete the secret construction quicker and more accurately than I first hoped, they used a good range of language – next to, on top of, […]
Tomorrow, I work with Year 3, completing some of the activities that were so successful with Year 6. I plan to introduce the session with a secret construction, along similar lines to the one made at the start of last Wednesday’s lesson with Year 6 – a simple house like structure using only a couple […]
On Thursday I followed up Wednesday’s work outside by taking it a step further. My Year 6 pupils were asked to create mini versions of our large circle using wool and paper plates. I had pre-cut the plates to have a range of evenly distributed and more random slots around the edges. Pupils were then […]
I’m not entirely happy with the way yesterday went. For a start, we didn’t manage to fit in everything I had originally expected, which stops me from trying out all three activities with the small group as planned. Also, the group had grown by two to thirteen, making it a little on the large side […]
Here we go then… I attended the first meeting of many over the next two years as I begin my professional journey to a richer, greener, hopefully much improved, teaching field. I have many ideas about what I would like to achieve from this course – specific, actual targets aren’t something I’ve thought about. Yet. I know […]