Elly Warnock

I came across this great visual today outlining 12 strategies from Jo Boaler to help pupils learn and love Maths. Praise what children have done not the child. Always be a good Maths role model. Praise mistakes as learning opportunities. Encourage pupils to work on challenging problems. Help but don't do it for them. Encourage drawing wherever you can. Support pupils to make sense of maths at all times. Encourage pupils to think flexibly about numbers. Never time children as they work. Pinpoint the logic in incorrect answers. Give children Maths puzzles. Play games that use Maths. As I reflect on this list, I love the way that these strategies summarise the work that we have carried out with Dinah over the past two years.  My favourite?  Number 3 without a doubt!  Praise mistakes as learning opportunities.  This is something that I am passionate about - in fact we celebrate mistakes.  Kids know that I love it when they make a mistake. ...

Chapter 7: From Tracking to Growth Mindset Grouping One key factor in student achievement is known as "Opportunity to learn."  Put simply, if students spend time in classes where they are given access to high-level content, they achieve at higher levels. LOW FLOOR, HIGH CEILING TASKS Students start behaving badly when they are given the message that they cannot achieve . When students start to believe they can achieve, and they understand that I believe in them, bad behaviour and lack of motivation disappear. To encourage students to take maths to different levels: 1. Provide open-ended tasks. open-ended low floor, high ceiling. These are the MOST engaging and interesting maths tasks They are tasks that teach important maths, inspire interest and encourage creativity. In a growth mindset classroom, it is the teachers job to challenge, support, and stretch them at exactly the right level. Such teaching, although demanding, is also extremely fulfilli...

Chapter 6: Mathematics and the Path to Equity "We need all teachers to believe in all students, to reject the idea of some students being suitable for higher-level math and others not, and to work to make higher-level math available to all students, whatever their prior achievement, skin colour, or gender." "There is an imperative need for mathematics to change from an elitist, performance subject used to rank and sort students (and teachers) to an open, learning subject, for both high-achieving students, who are currently turning away from mathematics in record numbers, as well as the low-achieving students who are being denied access to ideas that they are fully capable of learning." Equitable Strategies 1.  Offer all students high-level content. 2.  Word to change ideas about who can achieve in mathematics. 3.  Encourage students to think deeply about mathematics. "Girls, more than boys, desire a depth of understanding that is often unavailable i...

Chapter 5: Rich Mathematical Tasks "Teachers are the most important resource for students.  They are the ones who can create exciting mathematics environments, give students the positive messages they need, and take any math task and make it one that piques students' curiosity and interest.  Studies have shown that the teacher has a greater  impact on student learning than any other variable." (Darling-Hammond, 2000). Engaging maths = curiosity, connection making, challenge, creativity and usually collaboration. Maths excitement = maths engagement. Number sense is crucial. Students have to be taught to listen to and respect each other's thinking. It is crucial to engage in "low floor, high ceiling" tasks. What comes first?  The chicken or the egg?  THE EGG!  Give the real problem first as this engages the students and ignites their curiosity and then give them the method. We want students to think intuitively about the problem. We want stude...

Chapter 3: The Creativity & Beauty in Mathematics This chapter has really challenged me to think about what maths is really all about... Mathematicians "will say it is the study of patterns; that it is an aesthetic, creative, and beautiful subject (Devlin, 1997)." "Mathematics is a cultural phenomenon; a set of ideas, connections, and relationships that we can use to make sense of the world.  At its core, mathematics is about patterns .  We can lay a mathematical lens upon the world, and when we do, we see patterns everywhere; and it is through our understanding of the patterns, developed through mathematical study, that new and pwerful knowledge is created." "When we do not show the breadth of mathematics to students, we deny them the chance to experience the wonder of mathematics." Wolfram (2010) proposes that working on mathematics has four stages: Posing a question Going from the real world to a mathematical model Performing a calcu...

Chapter 2: The Power of Mistakes and Struggle "Every time a student makes a mistake in math, they grow a synapse." (p.11) The ramifications of this are HUGE! So, if students are not making mistakes (Often the best and brightest), synapses are not developing. "What separates the more successful people from the less successful people is not the number of their successes but the number of mistakes they make, with the more successful people making more mistakes." (p.13) "Imperfection is a part of any creative process and of life, yet for some reason we live in a culture that has a paralysing fear of failure, which prevents action and hardens a rigid perfectionism.  It's the single most disempowering state of mind you can have if you'd like to be more creative, inventive, or entrepreneurial." (Sims, P. (2011, August 6). Daring to stumble on the road to discovery. New York Times . Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/jobs/07pre.html?_...

Chapter 1: The Brain and Mathematics Learning Scientists are able to look at brain growth and brain degeneration and can see the impact of different emotional conditions upon brain activity! Wow! "When we learn a new idea, an electric current fires in our brains, crossing synapses and connecting different areas of the brain." (P.1) "If you learn something deeply, the synaptic activity will create lasting connections in your brain, forming structural pathways, but if you visit an idea only once or in a superficial way, the synaptic connections can "wash away" like pathways made in the sand.  Synapses fire when learning happens, ... synapses fire when we have conversations, play games, or build with toys etc." (p.1) Example of London Black Cab drivers who have to learn 25, 000 streets and 20,000 landmarks within London, taking two to four years of study to complete. The hippocampus in the taxi drivers' brains had grown significantly!  After retir...