How Should a Recovery Curriculum Look?
So What Now? Catch-Up? Recovery? Or ‘Business as Usual’ ? I must admit I’ve been thinking A LOT about this since the new year. Come the 8th March, the vast majority of our children will be returning to us full-time. Children and young people are anxious enough at the moment. They have missed school, missed their […]
Are we Dividing Wrong?
So I’ve been thinking really hard for a few years now why it is that children seem to get so confused by division. I’m not saying I have the full answer yet, but I do think that it might be a lot to do with the fact that for some reason we usually introduce division […]
Reflections of 2020
So today we finally say goodbye and good riddance to 2020. We marked it with a lovely walk up on Devil’s Dyke (see photo above). My natural tendency is to look for the positives, but that can feel a bit forced, and a bit ‘everything is marvellous’. For me, the secret is probably the way […]
The Paradox of Mastery
Discovering new words is exciting. I remember the sense of empowerment the very first time I heard words like ‘philtrum’, ‘mastication’, ‘hyperlink’, and in more recent times ‘selfie’, ‘hangry’ and ‘covidiot’. Often I discover a new word only to discover that others have been using it for years, sometimes decades. My joy is understandably shortlived. […]
Geometry Wordsearch
Funnels
Depth, Dormancy and Permanence.
I had an interesting experience recently, which made me reflect on what I now think is an overly simplistic model of memory – namely the very common binary way to thinking about working memory and long-term memory. Here’s what transpired: My son recently asked for help with A-level maths homework. It was a bearings question, […]
Writing this is a RISK. But I believe in taking risks.
Deep breath… Ten years ago I left the security of a great job, a secure pension and a good salary to follow a dream. That dream was to become a support to teachers who didn’t yet feel the same love for mathematics that I did. I was fortunate. Part of that, I believe, is down to […]
What Price Mastery? The Place of Culture in Education
Much has been written recently, both about mastery and the way in which it is interpreted in different cultures. I have been fortunate enough to be able to travel widely both in the UK and abroad, and rarely miss an opportunity to learn about education wherever I go. While usually my trips are predominantly to […]
School. Or Education?
Education. Everyone in the world gets one. To doubt this is to confuse the concept of education with the idea of schooling. My view of education is perhaps a little different from many: I define it as the sum total of your experiences, how you choose to interpret them, and how you choose to respond […]
The Textbook Dichotomy
There has been lots of talk in recent months about the merits or otherwise of using textbooks in primary mathematics. Inevitably whenever such a contentious issue arises in education, differing points of view all attract their share of passionate advocates, and this particular issue has proved to be no exception. In my experience, however, things […]