Bristol Primary Maths Update – January 2015
(It’s quite long I’m afraid, so just press CTRL and click to go straight to a section you want!)
Performance descriptors consultation update
Summative tests for the new curriculum
Boolean Maths Hub & visiting Shanghai teachers
LA courses
New curriculum medium term planning support docs
Exemplification of ‘depth’
Part part whole model
Jo Boaler & Mike Askew Papers
Bristol Primary Teaching School Alliance
Maths interventions: 1st Class @ Number
Performance descriptors consultation update
Some of you may have read (and even responded to!) the performance descriptors
consultation document which was open for comments until December. It was seeking input
on performance descriptors for teacher assessment at KS1 and KS2 end of key stage and
what schools should report to parents at this stage (in conjunction with the test results).
Results will be published “around 26th Feb” and final performance descritors will be
published “in Autumn Term 2015”. Generally they seemed to get a fairly large thumbs
down for being overly lengthy and complicated, and inconsistent in approach across subject
and key stage. From what I have heard, the maths ones are likely to be fairly substantially re
written so don’t start to plan any whole school assessment approaches based on them yet.
One interesting aspect was that the criteria for ‘meeting expected standard’ were well
below the actual curriculum requirements for both Year 2 and Year 6 – maybe an admission
that the new curriculum is actually just too challening? It will be interesting to see what is
published ‘around 26th Feb’.
Summative tests for the new curriculum
On the topic of assessment, just before the holidays the South Glos maths team sent out a
flyer (attached to this email) for summative tests for the new curriculum which they have
written. From the info provided, they look like they could be extremely useful. Slightly
annoyingly it arrived JUST as I was finishing trying to do the same thing, and making up some
summative tests for the new curriculum using testbase content - following what will be the
format for SATs of having a written arithemetic paper and a using and applying paper. The
children sat them before Christmas – they were … ‘challenging’ (!) but interesting for our
teachers and children to see the demands of the new curriculum and have definitely
informed our teaching for this term. The data set we have got out has been really useful,
and I’ve tried to work out approx old money level thresholds to use them to vaguely track
progress. I found that the children who were ‘mastering’ the Year 3 content were working
at about 3b, those mastering the Year 4 content were working at 4bish and those mastering
the Year 5 content were working at 5c equivalent, so there are some definitely jars with the
guidance that the new Year 6 floor standard will be 4b equivalent – will make the outcomes
of the performance descriptor consultation (above) particularly interesting to see. Anyway,
if anyone would like the summative tests (there are sets for Years 3, 4 and 5) then I am very
happy to send them on to any of you who have a testbase subscription (as all the content is
from there I think it probably is better to restrict sharing it to schools who already pay for
testbase content if that makes sense). If you’d like to purchase the South Glos ones then
the flyer is attached.
Boolean Maths Hub & Visiting Shanghai Teachers
It was great seeing lots of you at the Hub Launch on Tuesday. Well done to the Cabot
Learning Federation Team for organising such a great event. Those of you who were there
heard Mandy, Sal and Mike, from some of the CLF primaries, talk about their visit to
Shanghai as part of the Maths Hub intiative, and some of us also heard from Mike
(Fishponds) at the last best practice seminar. I just wanted to update those of you who
weren’t there last night to say that two of the Shanghai teachers will be coming to Bristol in
March. As Mike promised, Fishponds and Begbrook will be hosting lots of open classroom
days, where you can come along and spend the day watching some of the lessons taught by
Sherry (one of the Shanghai teachers) and her colleague, and join a planning session to find
out a bit more about the amazing approaches to maths teaching in Shanghai. I promise to
email as soon as dates have been confirmed with details of how to reserve a place – it
should be a brilliant (free!) professional development opportunity and I know Mike, Sal and
Mandy have been working incredibly hard to put an exciting programme together for us all.
If you don’t have the opportunity to take a full day to visit, we are hopefully also organising a
twilight event at Bristol University. Again, we’ll let you know dates and details as soon as
they are finalised.
On the topic of Shanghai influences on maths teaching, I have also attached an NCETM
report from the first wave of Shanghai teachers who visited various schools around the UK
before Christmas. It will give you an idea of the approach and may whet your appetite. The
best thing of all I have come across on Chinese maths teaching is Liping Ma’s book, Knowing
and Teaching Elementary Maths, which is a fairly mindblowing comparison of primary teacher
subject knowledge in China and the US. Can’t recommend it highly enough! Really made
me feel that success in the new curriculum is ALL about creating structures in your school
to develop and share great teacher pedagogical subject knowledge – maybe something we
don’t focus on enough, probably partly as Ofsted never seem to mention anything about
that in their reports, though it was a key message from Jane Jones (lead maths HMI) who
many of us saw speak at the summer conference.
LA courses
The next Best Practice Seminar (run by Duncan Heryett of the LA) is on Tuesday 17th March from
1.30 - 4.30 at Enginneers House. Places can be booked through the Trading with Schools website.
New curriculum medium term planning support docs
As I’ve mentioned a couple of times, a group of subject leaders sat down last year and
bemoaned the lack of central guidance being provided to support teachers with the
necessary pedagogical subject knowledge to teach the new curriculum. I’ve been pulling
together ideas from this group, and from other sources like Anne Watson and some of the
amazing articles on nrich, to write what we have called ‘medium term planning support
documents’. It is basically a document that teachers can read at the start of planning a new
unit of work to give them the key subject knowledge, models, misconceptions etc. We had
planned to ask for a payment for the set, but I still haven’t got all of the plans finished. For
the moment we are freely sharing them, and then as and when they are finished I hope it is
OK if you either choose to buy them or just delete them if you don’t want to go on using
them – it will probably be about £250 to buy them – basically just to try to cover the supply
costs of time out of class to write them! I hope that seems OK. There are support docs
for all the number strands for Years 1 – 5 ready to go – if you would like to receive them,
or you have received some from me but not the full set, then just let me know and I will
send them on.
Exemplification of ‘depth’
Loads of you have been asking about mastery and ‘depth’ and what ‘going deeper rather
than moving children on’ actually looks like. Debbie Morgan, the fab primary lead of the
NCETM, is gathering a group together to write some exemplification materials on this. I
think they should be published in Term 5 (ish?). Again, I’ll keep you updated. I’m having a
go at writing the measures strands (my new favourite topic – AMAZING for linking to
fractions – why have I only just realised that?) and am due to have a first draft for start of
Feb so am happy to share those if you would like some ideas before we get them all
collated, signed off and available to share as a full set. I think it will be a bit similar to the old
National Strategies Pitch and Expectations doc which I know I found really useful back when
I was new to the game!
Part part whole model
A quick update on a nice model a few schools have been playing around with this year - the
‘part part whole’ model which I think originally hails from some areas of the US. It is just a
LOVELY model for representing additive relationships and helping children move between
addition and subtraction. Here’s a photo of work from one of our Year 2s, using it to
identify related addition and subtraction facts. I’ve attached a few slides giving you a few
ideas we’ve been playing around with, but we have found that once you have the model in
your mind lots of applications pop up where it seems like a great way to try to explain a
concept. We’ve only been using with it for six months or so though, so I am sure you will
come up with lots of your own ideas for using it. For those of you who are using the
medium term planning support documents, you will also see it referenced and explained a
bit more in there. There is too much to go into in depth here, but those of you who have
started playing around with the Singapore Bar Method will see some links too.
Jo Boaler & Mike Askew Papers
Lots of us were lucky enough to hear Jo talk at the truly fantastic maths conference which
Duncan organised in the summer. Some of you may have seen Jo’s new paper, Fluency
without Fear, but if not it is worth a read and is attached to this email. I have also enjoyed
reading a Mike Askew paper called Number Talks (in fact Jo also mentions Number Talks in
her article). Number talks are separately timetabled and carefully structured 15 minutes
sessions which focus on discussing a particular calulation in depth and developing alterative
approaches. However, I have used the idea just to exemplify for teachers what high quality
maths talk looks like in every day teaching and learning. The ideas in the article tie in well
with the new curriculum aims of fluency and reasoning. Happy reading!
Bristol Primary Teaching School Alliance
Quite a few of you have now met Stewart McSmythurs (Holymead) who is now also doing
maths support across the city and has been doing a great job of it. Welcome too to Kate
Jenkins (numeracy lead at Hannah More) who has also recently joined the growing team and
will be a great asset to the team. It’s lovely to have them to work with!
On that subject, please find attached to this emai l the general Bristol Primary Teaching
School Alliance newsletter – the Alliance is made up of various Bristol primaries. We (I!)
now have the fabulous Jane Carter whipping us into shape, so soon you may even see a logo
at the top of this little newsletter just like the official teaching school one attached! Your
head should also have received this, but it would be great if you could pass on to your
English leader in particular as there are some new courses coming up which may be of
interest to them. The English SLEs (Specialist Leaders of Education) are hoping to put
together a subject specific newsletter (much like this one) and if your English leader is
interested in receiving this, please could they let Jane Carter know on Jane.carter@bristolschools.uk
Maths interventions: 1st Class @ Number
I often think that everyone must have heard of the 1st Class @ Number interventions as
schools which use them tend to be so evangelical about them, but a couple of you have
asked recently what good maths interventions are out there, so I thought I would just
mention these en masse. The programme was developed at Edge Hill University, and is a
really structured approach, which an LSA leads with a small group. There are 30 or so
sessions which are delivered at least 3 a week. We’ve found children routinely make a year
or so gain in maths age in the couple of months they are on the programme, and national
data backs this up. If you are interested in finding out more, here is the link to Edge Hill
https://everychildcounts.edgehill.ac.uk/ecc-for-schools/what-is-1stclassnumber The local
trainer is Sue Rayner who really is inspiring and helpful, and will (I’m sure!) be happy to
answer any questions you have and send you training dates. Sue’s email is
sue.rayner27@gmail.com
Right, I think that is it for now. I will let you know as soon as I have more info
on the visiting Shanghai teachers, and opportunities to visit Fishponds and
Begbrook to see them do their stuff!