Maths Hubs across the West Midlands are currently offering teachers from the region the chance to participate in a variety of Work Groups covering all key stages of secondary education.
Alongside their various levels of Teaching for Mastery training, the Maths Hubs are offering Work Group opportunities in the following areas:
Post-16
Supporting Post-16 GCSE Resit – Work Groups in this project will explore effective ways of teaching key content to GCSE resit students, and effective ways of working with teachers of post-16 resit GCSE in the context of COVID recovery. Participants will, through collaboration and experimentation, deepen their knowledge and understanding of the curriculum demands of GCSE Maths and their awareness of pedagogical approaches that best support students taking GCSE for the second time. Participants’ departments will, through shared good practice, become more effective at teaching GCSE resit. This will come from wider and more confident use of teaching approaches such as bar modelling, multiplicative reasoning, realistic contextualisation, or teaching for mastery.
Developing Core Maths Pedagogy – These Work Groups give teachers opportunities, through collaboration and experimentation, to develop improved teaching approaches that support the open-ended problem-solving skills Core Maths students need to develop, and to share these with departmental colleagues. Participant departments will support the role of Core Maths in promoting contextualised problem-solving and links to teaching in other subject areas. The project involves a direct working partnership between the Maths Hubs and the Advanced Mathematics Support Programme (AMSP).
Developing A level Pedagogy – This project provides national support for the effective development of pedagogy in the teaching of A level Mathematics to support COVID recovery, to enhance the quality of teaching and the conceptual understanding of students, and for the development of participants as leaders of A level teaching professional development in their own school or college. It aims to develop and sustain local communities of practice, involving collaboration between teachers to develop pedagogy for their teaching of A level Maths. The project involves a direct working partnership between the Maths Hubs and the AMSP.
Wider Secondary Opportunities
Secondary Subject leadership – This new project offers focused support to secondary heads of department or subject leaders to enable them to better understand and implement teaching for mastery approaches across their department, and to develop in their role as leaders of both student learning and teacher professional development. It provides an opportunity for participants to deepen their understanding of teaching for mastery approaches, of their wider roles, and of their capacity with their colleagues to transform secondary maths learning.
Secondary Maths MAT Leads – This project offers focused support to those who lead maths across multiple schools within a MAT to enable them to better understand and develop effective maths pedagogy approaches across those schools. It will also support participants to develop their role as a leader of system change, curriculum change, and teacher professional development. Whilst those who lead maths across MATs are often the subject lead for both primary and secondary, the key focus for this programme is their work with secondary teachers, although consideration will be given to transition and how the different phases relate to each other. Additionally, focusing on developing skills with one phase is likely to impact positively on work with other phases.
Mathematical Thinking for GCSE – This project is for secondary maths teachers who are looking for practical and theoretical elements to address their students’ GCSE attainment. The stated aims of the KS4 Programme of Study are that, through working on the content, students should develop mathematical fluency, mathematical reasoning and problem solving. While mathematical thinking is a key feature of all of these, the focus of this Work Group is to support teachers in developing their understanding of mathematical thinking as it relates to problem-solving and reasoning, using practical task types to explore what it means for students to get better at mathematical thinking and what this looks like in the classroom.
Year 7 – 11 Coherence – This project focuses on participating teachers working together to analyse, deconstruct and trace through the curriculum a selected key topic area, developing insight into effective teaching approaches and considering the implications for longer term curriculum design. The project was previously known as Challenging Topics at GCSE, but its name has been amended to more accurately reflect the work undertaken as well as to convey the importance of curriculum coherence.
Years 5-8 Continuity – Work Groups in this project aim to strengthen the transition from primary to secondary school by focusing on curriculum and pedagogical continuity over Years 5 to 8. Central to the Work Group is the promotion of cross-phase communication between teachers to address issues of maths knowledge and learning transition as distinct from pastoral considerations. Whilst many Work Groups will focus on using multiplicative reasoning resources, Work Groups can explore any aspect of the KS2/3 curriculum.
Secondary Early Career Teaching – This project is designed to support secondary early career teachers (defined as those who are in their first two years of teaching) in developing specialist knowledge for teaching maths, thus enabling them to understand, teach and support pupils in maths in the classroom.
Secondary Non Specialist Teaching – This project is designed to support non-specialist teachers teaching maths in a secondary school in developing specialist knowledge for teaching maths, thus enabling them to understand, teach and support students in maths in the classroom.
To find out which of the Work Groups above your local Maths Hub is offering, and to book a place, please select your local Maths Hub website:
If you’re not sure which is your local Maths Hub, you can find out on the NCETM website.
Please note that any dates given for the Work Groups were for gathering a first idea of numbers. Unless the information on the websites above says that the Work Group is full, you’ll be very welcome to join.