Ria Symonds, AC for Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham & Nottinghamshire
In a series of six meetings over the academic year, our first teacher network meeting was kindly hosted by Ockbrook School in October. 11 local teachers were in attendance for plenty of sandwiches, tea and cake, as well as a lot of discussion about KS4 and KS5 mathematics.
After an introduction to the newly rebranded Advanced Mathematics Support Programme (AMSP), teachers were able to get stuck into some maths by trialling out a KS4 enrichment activity entitled ‘Dragon Quiz’. This activity has been used in past events hosted by the University of Nottingham but can be easily adapted for use in the classroom. The aim is to “build” your dragon by answering as many maths questions as possible. But be warned… some questions are easier than others!
The second half of the meeting was used to discuss some “hot topics” amongst the maths teaching community, including challenges with teaching the new linear A level syllabus and teaching the first cohort of new GCSE mathematics students. Generally the new changes to KS4/KS5 mathematics was welcomed, but teachers are still facing some difficulties in teaching content effectively due to restrictions on timetabling and/or setting schemes of work that can be co-taught effectively. Following on from these discussions, we touched upon the new Core Maths qualification, with much interest from the teachers. As such this will form the basis of our next meeting in November.
We hope to encourage more teachers from the local area to join our network and welcome you to our next meeting on Monday 26 November 2018. You can find out more in our events listing.