Numeracy Hit

I was recently asked for numeracy ideas which could be delivered to all departments across the curriculum as a hit of numeracy.

Below I’ve listed the ideas that came to mind.

piechart wheel

Participation Pie Charts

When completing group work, as the pupils to draw or use an instant pie chart, where each colour represents each member of the group. They then represent their participation through proportions.

Check out our post Instant Graphs for instructions on how to make instant pie charts.

 

 

Where is the Maths?

Display subject related photos such as sprinters crossing the finish line in PE, Mondrian photos in Art, or a freeze frame from a Simpson’s episode (any they have a lot of maths) and pose the questions “where is the maths”?

Is …… a Mathematician?

Again use a subject related picture such as a picture of Heston for Food Technology is displayed along with the question “is Heston a Mathematician”?

Organising & Sorting

Ask pupils to organise or sort items, products, topics, keywords into groups. Use hula hoops to create venn diagrams. Ask pupils to justify their categories.

Ask Mathematical Questions

Is there a pattern?
Can you predict what is next?
What is your hypothesis?
What’s the same? What’s different?

Scrabble your Key words

I love this idea from Mr Collin’s check it out here. Ask pupils to create a list of topic keywords and using the scrabble value for each letter they find the total sum of each word. The student who find a topic related word with the highest score wins.

You might also be interested in reading our posts Numeracy Coordinator – Making the role count! and Instant Graphs.

We would love to hear your ideas! Get in touch via @numberloving or NumberLoving’s Facebook page!

You might also be interested in visiting our Store for both free and premium resources.

Thank you for reading

NumberLoving Sharon

 

NumberLoving’s 1st Birthday!

Wow over 160, 000 visitors this year! Myself and Laura are made up to be celebrating the success of Number Loving in its first year!

Our Top Ten Posts

1) Mathematical Fortune Tellers; using this childhood game to practice Maths

2) Do or Die with Dice; Many games to play with dice, my favourite practising place value by playing Nasty.

3) Nets to Catch Angry Birds; Studying nets, volume or surface area by making these 3D shapes in the form of angry birds.

4) Treasure Hunts; Get pupils up and out of there seats

5) Pimp your classroom; Looking for inspiration then look no further for ideas on interactive displays

6) The Author; here I am, I have worked hard to build up our website and appreciate all the great feedback I have received! Laura Rees-Hughes also co-authored NumberLoving from 2012 to 2016.

7) Maths Top Trumps and Other Games; The Top trumps, one of most successful resources for spicing up practising a skill.

8) Numeracy Coordinator Making the Role Count; Our ideas on how to successfully build the numeracy role and raise the profile of numeracy in your school.

9) Dance Maths; Every department needs a set of numbered dance mats, great for plenary or even open evening.

10) Cooperative Learning; Tools and resources; Ideas and resources built around the Kagan approach to cooperative learning.

Here are some of favourite posts that haven’t made the top ten but are definitely worthy of a mention;

1) Tick or Trash; Our latest resources added to the store, tick one answer and trash the other.

2) Outdoor Learning; Using the school building and trigonometry skills out and about the school site.

3) Teaching Loci; Using outside spaces and the pupils themselves to teach loci

Get in touch @numberloving and check out our free and premium resources in our NumberLoving Store.

SSAT North West Innovation Show

This academic year sees the SSAT’s (Special Schools and Academies) first regional sister event to The Achievement Show, The North West Innovation Show. UPDATE SSAT has a new website, check it out here 

I first attended The Annual Achievement show in London in 2010, along with 3 colleagues. The day was fantastic as leading professionals shared their ideas, tactics and led delegates through exciting and thought provoking sessions. The event is split into several areas for example; numeracy, literacy, leadership, pupil voice. Each area has a number of sessions delivered by leading professionals throughout the day. Delegates can choice which area and sessions they attend on the day, allowing for flexibility depending upon their need.
Since this event in 2010 we not only return each year with more colleagues to the national event but we have also introduced our own successful All Saints achievement show. This is held within house and plays a huge role in the continuous professional development programme.
The SSAT now looks to increase the opportunities for teachers to attend such events in these increasingly difficult financial circumstances as many schools face budget cuts. So the Innovation show will be held in the North west, reducing travelling costs and attendance is £75 per delegate, with 10% off for multiple delegates from the same institute. Either way it is a great price compared to some courses that are available.
The following seven areas will be delivering 32 sessions during the North West Innovation show; Literacy, Numeracy, Baccalaureate, Leadership, New Technology, Inspiration, Enterprise. Further details are available here Innovation Show Sessions website, registration is needed but very easy. Of course myself and Number Loving’s co-author Laura Rees-Hughes will be presenting in the numeracy area at the show, sharing our ideas and experiences that helped to acquire a special mention in the latest ofsted report for All Saints Catholic CfL.
The show will be held on Monday the 20th of February 2012 at All Saints Catholic Centre for Learning. All Saints Catholic CfL has now established itself as a leading school within the community and has been in the newly built Building Schools for the future building for two years in January. With the schools break out spaces and home base organisation, it is also a great opportunity to see innovative education spaces at the forefront of the profession.

I hope to see you there!

Numeracy Coordinator – Making the role count!

The Numeracy Across the Curriculum (NAC) role hit the big time in 2001, following Ofsted’s primary numeracy evaluation all secondary schools were expected to hold a whole school NAC launch. At the time the role was introduced and many teachers will remember having whole school training and establishment of a school calculation policy in which all staff would multiply in the same way etc. School policies were drawn up and unfortunately for some schools numeracy stopped there. Whilst other schools developed projects ensuring numeracy truly was across the curriculum.

The role has (or should have) changed and evolved in terms of its purpose and aims for the academic year. If it hasn’t changed in your school it needs to, I hope this post will give some ideas of how to make a big impact. Don’t miss section 4, which for me was the start of revolutionising the role within my school.
1) Getting the Job Itself!

Is it an enviable job? Probably not, as it’s limitless possibilities can make the role daunting at first. For myself, once settled in, the lack of rules or limits allowed me to experiment, raise the profile of numeracy and the mathematics department, and hopefully inspire all those around me to love numbers the way I do!

Job specification from Norfolk county council and Riding’s school job description both detail the need for high communication skills.

2) Getting Started; Some useful Numeracy documents

It is important to determine the numeracy needs of your school in order to begin making a whole school impact. In order to do this I would recommend departments are asked to audit/detail when and how they include numeracy within their subjects. This could be done using this Numeracy Audit for departments and to determine staff training needs this could be used E3_numeracy_checklist.

I found Leicestershire County Council’s Numeracy Across the Curriculum, Key Stage 3 and 4 booklet most useful when starting in the role of numeracy coordinator. This is guidance of how to establish the role of numeracy coordinator, including adaptable policies and in particular ideas of how to raise the profile of mathematics. For me this was most important as I felt the role needed a shake up, and its impact needed to change the opinions of colleagues whom for many did not see the need for a numeracy coordinator role. Luckily they do now! Other policies such as St Alban’s Numeracy policy can be downloaded here, The Friary School policy is also available, as is Hazelwick’s policy.

Leistershire County Council’s Calculations Policy can be downloaded and adapted to suit your school’s needs.

The Mathszone website has a wealth of resources that could help in preparing to deliver inset to your school, as a source of ideas which you can then develop to be suitable for your school and its numeracy needs, in addition a How To booklet to be downloaded.

3) Spread the word; Get other departments involved

It is important that numeracy is detailed in schemes of work, however this was needed 10 years ago. For my school it was important to update new schemes but more important than this is to ensure that numeracy was not just an add on. Departments need support and guidance to ensure they provide opportunities for numeracy learning and not just numeracy content.

Suffolk Maths Team have developed a useful website which has downloadable resources and ideas of how numeracy can be delivered in other subject areas.

Maths Across the Curriculum– three easy projects to introduce ideas linking numeracy within PE and story time.

Here are two lists of how departments may link numeracy within their subject area. Maths Across The Curriculum and Numeracy in subjects.

Golden ratio in art is a one lesson project the art department and I developed to follow the completion of face portraits to see if pupils faces are following the golden ratio.

4) Raising the profile;

It is vital to use the role as numeracy coordinator to raise the profile of mathematics around the school and the community.

What better then to see both pupils and teachers using numeracy skills during break time! Getting pupils interested in numeracy is easy by setting challenges and puzzles around the school. Some puzzles were put on the flat screen TVs around school, however engagement was not huge. I wondered if the pupils had become de-sensitised to technology, so introduced the use of magic whiteboard as seen on Dragon’s den, this static write on material was great for use on the glass stairs. Alternatively use the glass pens as discussed in the previous post “Who wants Clean Windows”. Here are my ideas;

a) How many steps in the school? This had a great impact as we moved into our new Building School’s for the future (BSF) building which resembles a cube, pupils were encouraged to investigate their new school environment. Watching pupils climbing up and down the stairs in atrium counting was the pleasant reminder of how mathematical inquisitive people naturally are.

b) How many rectangles in the school ceiling? As you can see the schools building is made up of many rectangles, what else could be counted in your school? You could ask what is the total of the classroom room numbers.

c) How many seconds left of 2010? This would need updating to 2011 and a start time given, this was a great one for the school newsletter.

d) How do you measure up? I placed these measuring tapes and heights of famous people around the school with a poster asking “How do you measure up?” . Pupils were measuring themselves, comparing to their favourite celebrity as well as each other.

e) Distances here to… Around school I placed distances from the school to key wonders and places of the world. the measurements were given in both metric and imperial.

f) Playground Fun Introduce hop scotch, paint a chess board and bring mathematics back to the playground. I thought this would only appeal to key stage 3 pupils, however I was proven wrong when year 10 students are regularly taking part in a good old game of hop scotch.

5) Numeracy Day’s and Events

NSPCC world number day, This year the NSPCC’s World Number Day will be on Friday the 2nd of December. On this day your school can fund raise and join in the NSPCC world’s biggest Maths lesson. Registration is free, and once you have registered all the fundraising material can be downloaded ready to use.

World Maths Day from Mathletics will be on March the 2012, registration is free and pupils compete in 60sec games against players from around the world. Register now and book those computer rooms or laptop trolleys.

Four Nations Math Challenge from Mathletics, thank you to Colleen Young’s blog for drawing my attention to this Four Nations event happening this month on the 17th to 18th of November.

NGfL National Numeracy Strategy Resources

5) Form time,

Both literacy and numeracy are delivered during our 25 minute form times. Here are some of the resources used to deliver numeracy to year 11. 1 Y11 Intro 2 Handy Maths 3 Long multiplication 4 Division 5 Maths Command Words Guide

If you like these materials and would like a complete set of materials please follow and leave a comment saying so.

Numeracy Reading Books there are many books available with a mathematical theme for example Sir Cumference: And the Great Knight of Angleland and here is a list of maths_related_books. These can form a numeracy book boxes for reading time during year 7 registration or available in the school library.

I really hope I have given you some ideas for the numeracy role to make it stand out from the crowd, please follow for updates and leave comments of what worked for you.

Thank you all followers for making Number Loving a success! Get in touch @numberloving