I'm currently writing a new blog post on this subject, here's the draft.
Maths is not a GCSE.
Teach to test mentally has become so intrinsically intertwined with adherence to National Curriculum that teachers of Mathematics have become institutionalised from the outset of their teaching careers.
It is not their fault, my wife is included in this number and has been teaching secondary Mathematics for 25 years if we include her PGCE placements.
As a person diagnosed with ADHD, for me maths is a beautiful and wonderfully complex world of discovery, a view shared by Pythagoras who built a complete religion around it.
Yes, mathematics is the verifiable aspect of science, but it is also art.
It is why STEM became STEAM, the inclusion of art stimulates our fragile human minds like nothing else.
Yes, we can talk about the perpendicular bisector and have students draw clinical fundamentals or we can gift students a pencil, ruler, compass and a set of instructions to recreate artworks that have endured for millenia.
Is this something we have time to achieve in lessons?
We used to, but somewhere along the way our brief was changed and results became all that mattered.
Maths is not a GCSE, it is the framework for seeing and expressing the beauty in the world around us.
From my perspective (GCSE re-sit), choice of topics to cover is based on effort and reward. Constructions take time for students to learn, partly because they weren't learned at school, but rarely turn up on an exam paper. Quadratic/cubic graphs and transformations are done weekly as they are always on the paper.
Along with simultaneous equations and trigonometry, all three topics you mention should disappear from the Foundation syllabus and they should be replaced with more problem solving, harder fractions, decimals, percentages and ratios.
Good morning Craig,
I'm currently writing a new blog post on this subject, here's the draft.
Maths is not a GCSE.
Teach to test mentally has become so intrinsically intertwined with adherence to National Curriculum that teachers of Mathematics have become institutionalised from the outset of their teaching careers.
It is not their fault, my wife is included in this number and has been teaching secondary Mathematics for 25 years if we include her PGCE placements.
As a person diagnosed with ADHD, for me maths is a beautiful and wonderfully complex world of discovery, a view shared by Pythagoras who built a complete religion around it.
Yes, mathematics is the verifiable aspect of science, but it is also art.
It is why STEM became STEAM, the inclusion of art stimulates our fragile human minds like nothing else.
Yes, we can talk about the perpendicular bisector and have students draw clinical fundamentals or we can gift students a pencil, ruler, compass and a set of instructions to recreate artworks that have endured for millenia.
Is this something we have time to achieve in lessons?
We used to, but somewhere along the way our brief was changed and results became all that mattered.
Maths is not a GCSE, it is the framework for seeing and expressing the beauty in the world around us.
Love to you all
BISCUITS_BOX
From my perspective (GCSE re-sit), choice of topics to cover is based on effort and reward. Constructions take time for students to learn, partly because they weren't learned at school, but rarely turn up on an exam paper. Quadratic/cubic graphs and transformations are done weekly as they are always on the paper.
Along with simultaneous equations and trigonometry, all three topics you mention should disappear from the Foundation syllabus and they should be replaced with more problem solving, harder fractions, decimals, percentages and ratios.