Andrew Jeffrey's June 2008
Newsletter
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1. Welcome and feedback
2. Maths Website of the
Month
3. Fun with A4 – part 3!
4. Big News – new ebook on its way!
5. Travelling Expenses
6. Numbers: Adjectives or
Nouns? (part 2)
7. Einstein Says…
8. Book Review
9 Exciting news!
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1. Welcome!
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Dear Maths
Friends,
Happy June! I
hope you all had a great half-term and are enjoying
the second half of the Summer term. In my experience, this always accelerates
madly with outings, exams, sports days, sporting fixtures, end-of-year
productions, etc.
One of the
things I haven’t missed this year is report writing. Though in a perverse way I
miss it – I have even written a couple of reports for others!
The reason
that this issue comes to you earlier in the month than usual is that my diary
for June is pretty full, and I doubt that there will be much time later on. So
– here, earlier than usual, is this month’s bumper offering.
I received a
bit of email correspondence from people who read about the comments in last
month’s news concerning parts of speech and the language of mathematics. This
is discussed in section 6. I even had a fascinating email from a parent whose
teenage son sees numbers as colours. This rang a faint bell, and it turns out
that my wife knew something about this; more details next month.
I also
received a great email from John White, who showed me an A4 paper fold he
learnt at an ATM conference, and with his kind permission it is reproduced here
– an exclusive!
Life has
been very exciting recently – check out the past few blog entries to see a few
of my random thoughts of life in general: http://andrewjeffrey.co.uk/blog.asp
Finally,
despite repeating this every month, I am so grateful to all of you for being
subscribers. In fact, one of the most important things I have learnt in recent
years is that most of us so much to be thankful for, and having a
Please
remember that since the newsletter is
sent out automatically, hitting ‘reply’ will not work – your reply will not
reach me. I can always get emails sent to info@andrewjeffrey.co.uk
; please add this address to
your address book.
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2. Maths Website of the Month.
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My personal
recommendation this month is http://www.sparklebox2.co.uk/numeracy/ . (When you have got there, click on the link at the top of the front page
if you want to access resources for FS and KS1). This is a site run by
teachers for teachers, and it shows. Up until May this year, a myriad of
resources were available for purchase on this site, but it has always been my
policy in ‘Website of the Month’ to recommend great free sites, hence not having mentioned Sparklebox
previously. As of June, however, everything is FREE!
A huge
amount of thought has gone into the design of the site and its contents. I
would go so far as to say it may be the best repository of beautifully designed
free resources I have seen.
You will
almost certainly want to tell your colleagues about the site, as although I
have only mentioned the maths section, there are masses of other ideas for all
areas of the primary curriculum. Colleagues working in secondary, I would say
that this site is still worth a look, as some of the resources are still great
time-savers and useful in KS3 too.
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3. Fun with A4 – part 3!
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Before we
start, the answer to the question posed in part 2 was: A6. There is some great
teaching potential behind getting children to work out WHY; it is to do with
the ratio of the sides in the smaller and larger shapes…
I was surprised
how many of you seemed to like this feature, so it seems fitting to extend it
this month to include this great idea sent in by John White, a newsletter
subscriber:
Hi Andrew
Try this one. As you may know A-paper
has sides in the ratio of 1:root2. So you take your sheet of A4 portrait and
fold the bottom right hand corner up so what was the bottom of the sheet of
paper meets the left edge and fold. Now take the top right hand corner and
bring it down to meet what was the right hand side of the paper but now forms a
horizontal line across the paper. Fold this flat and you now have a kite. The
challenge is to find the perimeter of the kite. You might be surprised. Good
practice for surds and Pythagoras.
Thanks, John. DO try this out-John’s
idea about perimeter is a great idea for those of you in KS3, but for those who
teach younger children it is a great way of teaching about kites as a subset of
quadrilaterals.
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4. Big News – new ebook on its way!
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I received
an email recently from Amy, a subscriber who said that she had loved an idea I
had posted on the TES forum, about learning maths outdoors. She wanted to know which
of my books she could buy that would contain that and other ideas. Oops. I had
to write back and admit that I did not have such a book, but the truth is, Amy has inspired me to write one. And the best news of all (maybe inspired by sparklebox!)
is that this will be available
absolutely free. It will hopefully be added to the growing list of free ebooks available here:
www.andrewjeffrey.co.uk/freegifts.asp
Now – I need
your help. I have a few ideas of my own, but very little time to write (see
item 9!). What I need is for 20 (less than 1%) of you to send me a lesson that
you have done outdoors and I will do all the editing, collating and publishing.
Of course, all contributors whose lessons are included will be fully credited
(unless you wish to remain anonymous, of course.)
Send your
ideas to outdoors@andrewjeffrey.co.uk
Remember, DO
NOT reply to this email; your email will be lost for ever!
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5. Travelling Expenses
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Everything
seems to be getting more expensive. Except me! Thanks to a high level of
interest I am frequently travelling from schools all over the country. This
means that I am consuming vast amounts of petrol (well, my car is). Last year I
reduced my fuel charges from 40ppm to 35ppm. Since then, of course, the price at
the pumps has gone up and up. To be fair to clients I have absorbed these
costs. I am not sure how much longer I can go on doing this, but at the moment
my travel will continue to be charged at 35ppm. I have also simplified my
overnight charges; any visit that necessitates a night away from home will now
incur a £100 overnight charge. Hotel and food costs will all be included in
this. My fees to schools will also defy inflation and remain the same next
academic year.
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6. Numbers: Adjectives or Nouns? (part 2)
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Last month I
mentioned some research I had done about how children perceived numbers and
promised to discuss the implications for our teaching. (See May’s newsletter in
the archive for details.)
Since then I
have enjoyed meeting and talking with Richard Dunne, the charismatic
‘paper-cups’ man behind Making Maths Make Sense. More about MMMS in next
month’s newsletter. Richard and I seem to share similar ideas, in particular
the idea that operations have the potential to confuse but that, in his words,
‘the symbols speak to you’. I love Richard’s definition of the “+” sign, which
is: ‘get ready to get some more.’ Excellent stuff.
One of the
things that we both agreed on was the notion that it is not just whole numbers
that have this ambiguity; the word ‘half’ is another word that children
struggle with. My work with children over 20 years has made me realise that
most of them are not given enough experience of ‘half’ as a real number, and
even up to Year 5 many may only have seen it as a proportion OF SOMETHING ELSE.
So –it is
vital that from an early age we help children realise that things like ‘three’
and ‘half’ are real numbers, and not just useful labels to describe quantities
of objects. The regular use of Numicon, Cuisenaire and indeed any other
equipment that helps children develop strong concept images of number will pay
huge rewards, and help avoid most problems before they start.
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7. Einstein Says…
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Our third
quote is once again from my hero. I know I mentioned last time that there would
be guest speakers’ in this section, but as yet Albert still has more wisdom to
share. In fact, this may well be one of my favourites,
as it sheds a little light on what may be less that ideal about education at
the moment.
“If we knew what we were doing it wouldn’t be called
research.”
What can we
take from this quote? Surely that it is OK to take risks in the classroom. One
of the problems with education at the moment is that teachers have had it
drilled into them that they MUST do this, then they MUST do that, until there
is a very big risk that creativity is being stifled as we are required less and
less to think for ourselves. We are so obsessed with meeting targets/standards
that we are getting frightened of failure. I often get asked for lesson ideas
from teachers whose lessons are being observed. It is interesting to note that
very rarely does anyone ask for suggestions for a lesson that isn’t being
observed…my point is that we are too preoccupied with ticking boxes and
‘performing’ when we are being observed. In truth, we are being observed EVERY
lesson; by the most important people in the whole education system. And I don’t
think they will lose respect for us if we say every now and then “OK class,
let’s try this. If it doesn’t work, we’ll do it differently.” End of soapbox!
Dare to
experiment…
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8. Book Review…
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A fairly
recent addition to my bookshelf is “Maths Problem Solving” from Scholastic.
This is aimed at KS2. I like it because it is not just a book of lessons; there
is some very sound pedagogical theory and advice. Having said that, it is
extremely readable and user-friendly, and a great way
in to problem-solving for teachers who feel under-confident (but a useful
resource for ANY Primary teacher).
Published
by Scholastic, £20, ISBN 978-0-439-96570-5, written by John Dabell.
More details here. There is also a KS1 book, but I
cannot recommend this as I have not yet seen it.
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9. Exciting News!
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I can
finally reveal that I have been commissioned by a USA/UK publisher to write a
book over the summer all about ‘real-world’ maths. I can’t give out too many
details at the moment, but it’s a very exciting project (and I admit I was wondering what I would be doing to earn money in
August!)
Until Next
Time, AJ x
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