In these strange times due to COVID-19 and as a part of our continuous support to schools, MEI and the AMSP have developed many more online professional development courses for teachers. Online courses have been part of our offer for a while as some schools were having difficulties releasing their teachers for our face-to-face days, but the current situation inspired many more online courses. This might be an ideal opportunity for teachers to develop their knowledge and pedagogy, or to develop their career. We offer online courses for teachers of GCSE Mathematics and A level Mathematics and Further Mathematics. We also provide professional development for teachers of Core Maths which is gaining in popularity. We offer online courses for both new and experienced teachers.
Below are some of our ODPD (On Demand Professional Development) courses that are free to join at any point:
- Preparing your students for the MAT and the TMUA
- A level Further Maths: Discrete, Decision and Modelling with Algorithms
- Geogebra in the Maths classroom
- Preparing your students for STEP
- Spreadsheets and the large data set
- Numerical Methods for A Level Mathematics
- GeoGebra in the GCSE Mathematics classroom
- Imperial mA*ths project teacher support
- AS and A Level Further Maths: compulsory Pure top-ups
- Core Maths top-ups.
In addition to these courses, our Core Maths team have put together a series of professional development webinars, which form our Core Maths Festival. Each webinar is a standalone session, and you can apply for each one separately. The sessions are proving extremely popular, so early booking is advisable! There are still webinars yet to be released, so more will be available to book soon.
Also moving online is our Problem Solving Matters course for Year 12 students. The course is designed particularly, but not exclusively, for those intending to apply to the University of Oxford, Imperial College London, University of Warwick, Durham University or anywhere else that encourages the Test of Mathematics for University Admission (TMUA).
We also have two online network sessions for teachers planned:
The first is our Live Online NE KS3/4 Network Meeting on Monday 18 May 2020. In this session, we will explore the concepts of depth and enrichment, as well as giving teachers from across the region a chance to discuss their thoughts on grade allocation for the summer.
The second is our Teaching large data set in KS3&4 network meeting on Thursday 11 June 2020. This session will be particularly useful for KS3 and KS4 teachers, as well as those teaching the large data set. We will be joined by Jess Barnecutt from Oaklands School, who will share a four-lesson unit of work that they have developed to get students to use a real data set from one of Europe’s largest academic research projects, along with a powerful visual story. This has helped their pupils to critically engage with the realities of migration – through maths. The unit provides KS3&4 students with an opportunity to:
- apply statistics to authentic data and develop a stronger conceptual understanding
- explore a big data set, which is hugely beneficial in preparing students for A level Mathematics
- think critically about migration
- make links across the curriculum – to Art, English, Drama, and ICT
- use data to support an argument, and experiment with novel ways to present data.
The maths of migration is a project that would lend itself to a home learning project, and it would be especially useful for Year 11 students in their transition to AS/A level Mathematics. There will be plenty of opportunity to ask questions about how the project has worked in a London school and to engage with the data.
As always, please encourage colleagues in your school, and others, to join these meetings.