As the national student enrolment numbers for Core Maths are growing and approaching the number of students studying Further Maths, teaching this qualification in the North East still remains patchy and fragile, due to staff shortages and difficulties with time-tabling.
We ran a Core Maths Teacher Conference on the Friday 29 April 2022 at Gateshead Marriott Hotel, where new and experienced teachers of Core Maths had an opportunity to hear about resources, the links that Core Maths provides with the world of work, and how studying Core Maths provides support for other A level qualifications such as biology, geography, and psychology. Teachers had a chance to meet the AMSP’s national Core Maths leads Cat Van Saarloos and Sarah Denison, who delivered workshops to really enthusiastic classroom practitioners. The event was highly rated by the attending teachers and encouraged them to want to promote Core Maths to their students even more.
Cat and Sarah would be happy to deliver a session for teachers of maths and psychology, geography, and biology (in particular) for your school, perhaps on a training day or even online. Please contact your local Area Coordinator if you’re interested.
We’re hoping to establish a collaborative Core Maths Teacher Network in conjunction with the Maths Hubs next year so, again, please contact your local Area Coordinator if you’re interested in being a part of this. Teachers who are new to Core Maths, thinking about running the course in their school, or who have experience in the subject are all welcome.
If you want to know more about the Core Maths qualification, take a look at the Getting Started with Core Maths Padlet.
If you’d like to teach your students to think critically, the What’s Going On in This Graph? resource is heavily used by Core Maths teachers, and can also be used at KS3 when creating Core Maths style lessons. You could choose a graph and ask your students:
- What do you notice?
- What do you wonder?
- How does this relate to you and your community?
- What’s going on in this graph? Create a catchy headline that captures the graph’s main idea.
Another great resource is the AMSP’s Where’s the Maths in that? resources that can be used as a starter or as a bigger chunk of your lesson.