I was contacted by Rachael from the Westcountry Schools Trust, who was organising and planning a professional development day for all maths teachers in the trust. For one of the sessions, Rachael asked for some input from the AMSP in three different areas, with teachers choosing which content was of most interest to them.
We worked together with Rachael to help achieve her overall the aims of the day, and we put together three sessions which were delivered simultaneously.
Tom Rainbow delivered a session on Teaching Maths Through the Use of Context, which outlined different approaches that could be used when planning contextualised mathematics lessons. This helped those attending to have a chance to reflect on their relative merits and drawbacks.
In a Brief Overview of the AQA Level 2 Certificate in Further Mathematics, Will Warne shared some of the commonalities and extensions from the higher GCSE curriculum, he also led a discussion on reasons for offering AQA Level 2 FM and possible delivery methods.
There were some challenging GCSE exam questions that students with the trust schools found difficult. In the session on Developing Deeper Understanding for GCSE Higher tier students, we considered ways of helping students know what to do when faced with unfamiliar situations.
From a personal perspective, I had a wonderful day. It was great to be given the opportunity to work with so many teachers and for the ASMP to deliver three sessions that helped to support the mathematics curriculum and developments within the trust. If there are other MATs who would be interested in working with the AMSP to help deliver your aims, please get in touch.
By Margaret Harding