Maths Recovery Seminar, Edinburgh April 27, 2009
Posted by Mhairi Stratton in : Uncategorized , add a commentThe annual seminar for Maths Recovery is on Friday 19th June in the Gillis Centre, Strathearn Road, Edinburgh from 9.30 to 3.30.
The agenda has not yet been agreed but Jim Martland will be attending.
If you wish to attend please contact Sheila Laing – Sheila.laing@edinburgh.gov.uk The cost will be around £80 including lunch.
Update on Maths Recovery CPD in East Lothian. February 23, 2009
Posted by Mhairi Stratton in : Uncategorized , add a commentThis session the Maths Recovery Team have delivered MR Tracker sessions to individuals, departments, whole schools and even whole clusters! We will continue to run courses as and when requested.
In addition to this, the team have been busy creating MR Tracker boxes for every school. These contain a variety of resources which support this approach. After the Easter break, we aim to hold drop-in sessions where teachers can collect a box for their school, meet their cluster Maths Recovery Teachers and get fresh ideas. We hope that this will lead to further drop-in sessions where teachers can share good practice and support one another. Watch this space!
Four members of the team are also working towards a PGCE in Maths Recovery. Once completing this course, they will support full Maths Recovery training within this authority. This in-depth course would be of particular interest to SfL teachers, secondary maths teachers and primary teachers who wish to further develop their knowledge of maths recovery teaching. These courses should be available from October 2009.
MR Tracker - Is it making a difference? May 12, 2008
Posted by Mhairi Stratton in : East Lothian, Mr Tracker, Training , add a commentI met with a group of recently trained MR Tracker teachers
I started be asking them three questions:
Q1: What did you learn from the assessment interviews?
A:
- We can underestimate the ability of children
- It highlighted areas of difficulty and suggested why they were struggling
- Took a lot of time
- numbers across the decades are tricky
- It highlighted the discrepancy between verbal and written maths
- Children rely too much on their teacher’s approval
- There is a lot more to early numeracy than level A would indicate.
Q: How have your lessons changed?
A:
- More Practical
- I take more time reinforce and consolidate skills
- Extending children knowledge - always challenging them for more
- Getting children to explain their strategies
- Much more self assessment
- More counting (especially counting back)
- Faster Pace
- More active learning
- Asking for alternative strategies (”Can you show me a different way?”, “Prove it!)
Q: What are the advantages and challenges of MR Tracker ?
A:
| Advantages: | Challenges |
| Identifying the gaps in knowledge | Resources – can’t buy them have to make them |
| Children accessing lessons at their own level | Time management |
| Children are more willing and able to complete written task/recording because of all the practical experiences | Convincing parents/other staff |
| Active Learning! | |
| Saves money on workbooks! | |
| Better Understanding | |
| More secure of level A concepts | |
Mr Tracker - Implications for the Classroom May 6, 2008
Posted by Mhairi Stratton in : East Lothian, Learning, Mr Tracker, Planning , add a commentPlanning Formats May 6, 2008
Posted by Mhairi Stratton in : Mr Tracker, Planning , 1 comment so farAt a recent MR Tracker session I shared some planning sheets. Here are the preferred formats:
Useful website March 26, 2008
Posted by Mhairi Stratton in : International Developments, Sharing Good Practice , add a commentThe Count Me in Too website is worth a look. It is informative and offers practical advice for class teachers.
Click logo to open link
Count Me In Too is a project operating across New South Wales, Australia. It is designed to assist teachers broaden their knowledge of how children learn mathematics by focusing on the strategies students use to solve arithmetic tasks.
The project aims to improve the educational outcomes in mathematics for all students through professional development of teachers. It achieves this by increasing teachers’ understanding of how children develop increasingly sophisticated ways of solving arithmetical problems. The research-based learning framework used in the project provides direction for teaching and learning.
MR Tracker - getting started March 18, 2008
Posted by Mhairi Stratton in : East Lothian, Learning, Mr Tracker , add a comment•Initially ‘roam the known’ - Choose activities similar to the assessment interview to start with
•Plan daily - include 4-6 progression activities
•Consider and hypothesise about the current ways of thinking based on an initial interview or early lessons (OBSERVATIONS)
•Test your hypothesis by posing tasks and closely observe response
•Modify your hypotheses if necessary and continue the cycle
•Monitor children’s willingness to tackle the problem and how comfortable they are
•With practice and reflection teachers can learn to adjust in subtle and important ways the pace, difficulty and challenge in the tasks.
•Tailor the teaching as closely as possible to the initial and ongoing assessment. It should be at the cutting edge of children’s knowledge (ZPD)
•Activities should continually challenge with the aim to bring about reorganisations in the child’s thinking and the development of more sophisticated strategies.
•Use the skills of wait time, repeating, reposing and probing responses which you learned in the assessment phase.
MR Tracker site updated March 13, 2008
Posted by Mhairi Stratton in : East Lothian, Mr Tracker , add a commentI have finally managed to add example interviews for all assessment tasks. I hope that those people who have had MR Tracker training find them useful. Please let me know if more clips are required.
Click here to go to this part of the site
Early Years Head Teachers’ Meeting March 5, 2008
Posted by Mhairi Stratton in : East Lothian, Mr Tracker , add a commentThe Early Years Strategy Group (Active Learning) were invited to speak at the Head Teachers meeting.
This was our PowerPoint for Numeracy:
Supporting MR Tracker Training February 27, 2008
Posted by Mhairi Stratton in : East Lothian, Learning, Mr Tracker, Sharing Good Practice , 2commentsI have been trying to think of ways to support MR Tracker training. My first step was providing sub pages to this blog with information about the progressions (Click on the MR Tracker tab at the top and then click on the sub pages). A possible way of sharing ideas could be that teachers add their tried and tested activities as a comment at the foot of the pages. CLICK HERE TO SEE AN EXAMPLE .
My next endeavour is to add some video clips of MR Tracker Interviews. These can be found by clicking on the MR Tracker tab at the top and then clicking on the subpages - Observations. I hope that these prove useful to those teacher who have had MR Tracker input but would like more opportunities to practise observing children solving the tasks. Again teachers could post comments about these if they would like to start a discussion about any of the progressions.
Adding the video clips is proving time consuming. Hopefully I will have this part of the site complete over the next few weeks.
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