How do we engage unmotivated and resit GCSE students?

Overview

Our Core Maths Summer Festival is an extensive series of online interactive workshops. Each session will provide resources and activities which you can take straight to the classroom.

During the festival, we will cover a wide range of mathematical topics and contexts which will benefit maths teachers and teachers of other subjects, in particular, Biology, Geography and Psychology. You can download the Core Maths Summer Festival 2022 Programme to see a summary of all nine sessions.

Please note that the main session content will be delivered in the first hour and a half of each session and the remaining time will be dedicated to questions and support.

Who will benefit from attending?

This session will be useful for teachers of:

• GCSE Maths (including resit)
• Level 3 Core Maths

Content

Relevance is fundamental to every Core Maths course, developing valuable maths skills which empower students to investigate the world we live in.

Emma will explore how context-driven maths delivery can motivate and engage GCSE students, showing them the relevance of their maths skills and answering that perennial student question - 'When will I ever use this?'.

We focus on the value of contextualised maths through the lens of the disengaged GCSE student, paying particular attention to the topic that students find most difficult to relate to, algebra.

Mathematical Focus: Algebra

­Emma Bell is a Maths Education Support Lead for MEI. She has written Core Maths materials for Pearson and has many years’ experience in Further Educational colleges. Emma specialises in motivation; in ensuring that students have belief and confidence in their abilities.  

Materials and Equipment

The sessions will take place via zoom. If you register for the session, you will be sent a zoom link one week before and on the day of the event.

We aim to emulate as much of the ‘face-to-face’ experience as possible and strongly encourage you to put your webcam on for some or all of the session. Please also come prepared to discuss and reflect for short periods in breakout rooms as this will be a feature of some of the sessions.

Due to the interactive nature of these events, they are not recorded. If you are looking for Core Maths PD that you can do in your own time we recommend our ‘On Demand Core Maths top-ups’.

Eligibility

All teachers are eligible to apply for a place at the festival. If the festival becomes over-subscribed, teachers from state-funded schools and colleges are given priority; this may mean that we may be unable to provide places to non-state-sector applicants.

Cost

The sessions are free of charge to all teachers in England.