Saturday 28 December 2013

10 Tips for learning the times tables

Ten tips for learning the times tables are for use in the classroom or at home. They are simple and work.

If followed they will aid in the teaching and learning of that most difficult of topics in Mathematics ‘the times tables’.

I would sometimes print them off and hand them out to parents who asked either how they could help at home or what could they do specifically to teach their child multiplication tables.

You can adapt them and follow the same process, I can assure you it will go down well with any anxious parent who is keen to help their child.

Thursday 19 December 2013

BIDMAS, BODMAS and tearing your hair out.

Bidmas or Bodmas

BIDMAS BODMAS not again!
BIDMAS or BODMAS, it doesn't matter which mnemonic you use, it always seems to cause problems for pupils. Below is an idea that is simple and works.

A student or class may be able to apply it to an exercise after your explanation. Give a few questions a week later and all is forgotten. 

Either confusion reigns in the classroom when they try to apply it to problems that are outside the exercise specifically on BIDMAS or it is completely ignored by the pupils. Below is a an activity that will help.

Monday 30 September 2013

Factors, multiples, primes and Venn diagrams, all in one lesson!





Memory



Venn diagrams
We have all had the problem as teachers of thinking a class has understood a lesson we have taught only for the next time we see the class to despair they haven’t remembered  thing. 

It’s even worse for the poor learner, they may remember the aim of your lesson but as for the content it’s gone; what a loss of confidence in their own abilities. 

In an effort to help pupils remember I always try to use colour and imagery along with the other types of standard teaching techniques that all good teachers employ. These techniques are simple and work.

These two good friends of mine aid pupils’ retention of facts, techniques and concepts.

Tuesday 17 September 2013

A taste of summer in the Maths classroom

Ode to autumn
Do you long for the summer now we are back at school? As I write it is an overcast day in the UK, the trees are shedding their leaves and we have already had to turn on the central heating. Not exactly as Keats stated


‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness


Close bosom friend of the mature sun’


in his Ode to Autumn. You can bring a flavour of the summer to your life and classroom by playing ‘Fruit Salad’.


Equipment

I really enjoy game playing and different activities in the classroom, it makes such a difference to the pupil’s enjoyment and learning, and brightens up your day as well, rather than what can sometimes seem like an endless diet of worksheets. I once read about a mathematical activity which was a game based upon transformations. This was a board game; unfortunately this game involved you making the boards. The preparing over thirty cards for each player! In a class of 30 children this means you have to make and manage 900 cards. I do not have to tell any experienced teacher the absolute nightmare of handing out and collecting these pieces of equipment. Fortunately ‘Fruit Salad' requires no equipment at all.

Monday 29 July 2013

Maths and Mozart


Mozart and Maths – a winning combination?

Playing Mozart to your pupils will increase their grades in Maths. This seems to be the general tone of a number of articles that I have read in books and the press over the years. The ‘Mozart effect’ even extended to some companies producing CDs and videos that mothers could play and show their babies with the suggestion that it would maximise the little ones potential. Is it true? Can playing a piece of music make a youngster more intelligent?

 There have been many academic studies of the effects of playing Mozart to students the effect of students performance when doing Maths. One of the best articles that I have come across is by Judy M Taylor and Beverley J Row ‘The Mozart effect and Mathematical connection’. This is well worth a read, not a long article but provides a short and concise review of the literature.

Research
The original study only claimed a temporary effect in students ability to perform spatial-temporal tasks. Since then there has been a growing volume of research into the diverse use and effects of music, Mozart in particular and its effect on cognitive function, priming and mood or arousal. This expansion of research, from simple learning to a more complex educational and therapeutic uses, has yielded different and often conflicting results. 

 

Accelerated learning

In education it the ‘Mozart effect’ seems to fall under the banner of accelerated learning, which is a collection of ideas and techniques that purport to improve and enhance the classroom and learning experience. An excellent book that covers most of these ideas is Accelerated Learning in Practise: Brain-based Methods for Accelerating Motivation and Achievement well worth investigating. Accept some of the ideas, reject others, but there is a wealth of ideas that will challenge your practise.

 

My classroom

I decided to try out music in my classroom. I prepared a few pieces of Mozart and Bach’ loaded them onto my laptop and experimented. As the classes came in on the first day I had a fairly jaunty piece playing, some kids questioned what was going on, others objected, most looked bemused or ignored it. When everyone was seated, books out, I lowered the volume and the noise in the class reduced, they had been trained by TV programmes that when the music stops something else happens.

 

I did my ‘chalk and talk’, as we used to say, set the next phase of the lesson in action, and gently raised the volume of the music so that it was just audible. The lessons that day did not to my mind seem significantly different. It is very easy to fool yourself that things had changed so I tried to keep an open mind. I continued for several weeks to play Mozart and Bach then one lesson I forgot to start the music. After I had given my starter and main exposition I set the class to work, within a few seconds several kids wanted to know where the music was, they had come to expect and like the experience.

 

Does playing music make a difference? I do not know but I feel that it alters the mood in my classroom, the pupils appear to me to be calmer, less anxious and even happier. As for improvement in performance, again I cannot say what affect it has as any views would be purely anecdotal but if the atmosphere is better in the classroom then the conditions are right for improvement.

 

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

One of my lessons had to be curtailed because of a school event. Whilst packing away early on a girl complained that I hadn’t played her favourite, she couldn’t tell me what it was but hummed a piece, it was ‘Eine Kleine Nachtmusik’ by Mozart. A few others agreed that they liked that as well. The next lesson I saved that piece for the end of the session, and said I was going to play their favourite. Within seconds of starting the piece the whole class was working and humming along to the music, what a fantastic experience, one happy hard working class, one happy teacher.