Setting up for a new term 2013

Totton College is busy with lots of students coming in for enrolment and the enrolment lists for classes seems to be getting filled up quite quickly.  Now's the time that we need to sit down as a team and work out what we're doing for the following year.

Part of today's plan is to get our College intranet (Moodle) site up and running with relevant and current content for this new year. As I mentioned in previous posts, this year I intend to focus almost entirely on new ways of teaching to allow for students to take the lead on their maths learning journey. For the new 16-19 learners who are now required to obtain a maths qualification, it may be quite tricky as clearly previous ways of learning haven't worked for them. This year it will be all about finding out from them how they learn best and what's relevant to them.

There seems to be a lot of debate as to whether it's a good idea or not to 'force' maths and English onto students post-16 as clearly they did not 'get' or like it in the first place. My own opinion on this is that it is the teacher of the subject who is responsible for the interest in the subject. Maths is fundamental in everything we do, bar nothing. It's just unlocking the maths involved so show students how it's relevant to them and the things they're interested in. The amount of times I've heard (or seen) students ask 'when am I going to use this?' it's about time that the teacher showed them when and where they'll use it because it is a very valid question.

Math(s) apps for Functional Skills

There are a lot of different apps out there for pretty much everything but perhaps nothing directly for Functional Skills learners. Here's a list of some of the apps that I've had a look at that I think may be worthy of a quick download and see if they help - I'll try and add to the list as and when I can and give some feedback:

Math Pro for Kids (teachersparadise.com) - a bit of a pain that it's mentioned 'for kids' in the title which may put off adult learners but it's actually just an app to help practice basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. 16-19 learners could also use it as a start-up activity at the beginning of the session.

MathMate (SunnySide Blue) - again, another app to practice basic arithmetic and the ability to go up levels if you do well...so pretty good for the competitive bunch!

Nonograms/hanjie puzzles.
Ok, so these aren't apps but they are a different way of getting learners engaged and using logic to complete the puzzle and find out what it is. For those of you new to this kind of thing, take a look...

http://lordofthemoon.com/tbd/puzzles/nonogram/
http://www.puzzle-nonograms.com/print.php