This case study identifies how a combination of national professional development and direct support from the Area Coordinator helped the London Screen Academy and its maths department in their first years of opening.
About London Screen Academy
The London Screen Academy (LSA) is a new sixth form college for students who want to learn all the skills required for a career within the film and television industry: its vision is to create stories that change the world by building the next generation of storytellers.
Alongside its core offer of the UAL Diploma in Creative Practice, it offers A levels in English and Mathematics. Taking advantage of the AMSP offerings, the Academy ensured that their maths teachers had subject knowledge and the ideas to enhance their classroom teaching.
The Head of Department has previously joined us in our online version of the Teaching Advanced Maths course (PALM) and our New to Teaching Core Maths Work Group.
Professional development that has a direct impact on the classroom
“PALM was really useful especially with the tasks between training sessions. As a less experienced A level teacher you struggle with the timing of the content and every lesson feels very full, as an experienced teacher you learn how to space these better, so having a 10-20 minute activity you can squeeze into a lesson without derailing the lesson is super useful in filling that knowledge gap”get within the community, local and regional employers, is at the heart of everything..”
C Lupton
Head of Maths
London Screen Academy
Age range: 16 – 18
Subjects:
A level Mathematics
Core Maths (taught as part of enrichment programme
Student Enrichment can also be Professional Development
As well as accessing these free PD courses, the AMSP Local Area Coordinator came to the school and taught the year 13 students a maths lesson. Not only did this help support those students in their problem-solving skills, and allowed the teachers to learn how a more experienced A level teacher approached the topic.
“He did a problem involving the equation of curve that had to go through some points, which if I’d seen without his support I would have doubted whether I could run successfully. It would have taken hours for me to work out how to run it successfully on my own – time that I don’t have – but to see him do that in 30 minutes was really good and I would definitely use that activity now that I have watched it once.”
C Lupton
Head of Maths
Providing departmental support, guidance, and links to the local Maths teaching community
An Area Coordinator can also be an invaluable guide to less experienced Heads of Department, being able to provide advice, guidance, signpost resources, and other support.
At the London Screen Academy, the area coordinator helped the head of department identify priorities and link them with other teachers with more experience. This allowed teachers at the London School Academy to observe their teaching and for the Area Coordinator to support them in developing and structuring a scheme of work to outline all the learning that would be covered throughout the academic year.
Find out more about A level Mathematics click here. To find out more about Core Maths click here.
More advice
The following resources and pages offer further advice about increasing participation in level 3 maths and teaching Core Maths:
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