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

Using social media for Functional Skills learning

It's been frustrating for me to search endlessly for ideas on how to teach Functional Skills maths without relying solely on outdated handouts from the days of Adult Numeracy qualifications - don't get me wrong, a majority of them are still useful but I think we have a new breed of learners; ones who want to learn for themselves and who are adept at finding things out for themselves. I am one of those learners too and so I want to feed the enthusiasm of new students in September in a way that will engage them in their (re)learning of maths from the start.

How do I do it?

In my last blog post, I set out how I was going to find out about the sort of maths that is perceived to be used on a daily basis. Now I want to find out about my learners; what makes them tick, what are their interests and what will keep them attending my lessons!

I've just spoken with a few of my learners this morning who have just sat their Level 2 Functional Skills assessments and who I hope (in the nicest possible way) won't be back in September to re-take their assessments. I chatted to them about how I was planning on changing my approach to teaching so that they will be more in control of what they learn and how they learn about it - they were pretty interested especially when they knew I'd let them use their hobbies (fishing and football) in order to learn maths.

In every aspect of our daily lives we have to use maths. In every topic there is maths. In order to engage learners who previously did not get on with learning maths something has to change - I know myself that my hobbies include a ton of maths. I'm hoping to start a Sewing course at Totton College in October this year and just from writing my scheme of work and working with some of the textiles students in the evening class (as a volunteer) it's become apparent that a lot of people just don't get maths or have forgotten parts of it. The more I delve into it, I realise that I have so much I can work with. It's all about embedding it into their own interests.

Fingers crossed it works! I hope to be able to increase my retention and obtain some good pass rates for my students next year. Only time will tell...

I hate maths! (or so they say)

For every year I've taught so far, I always get some students telling me how much they hate maths and how they just don't 'get' it. Now, fundamentally I understand this because I too didn't 'get' it. I remember very vividly attending a new school where there were a lot of very posh, very intelligent children and they understood mental arithmetic and I didn't have a clue what the Pi was! I remember going home and crying because my mum and dad couldn't help to explain it to me. In those days (c. 1992?) the internet and Google were not even invented yet. Remember those days?!

Those of you who don't remember those days and are lucky enough to 'Google it' should be ecstatic - you can ask any question you want and get hundreds of responses...instantly! Indeed, this year I intend to focus much more on getting the learner to find out what they need to learn and just give some help and advice about how to go about doing it.

One of the first tasks I'm going to set my students is to get them thinking about the maths they do use and if they could do anything without maths.

For this task, I've designed a simple form - feel free to use it if you like!

QR codes for sites

Here's some useful sites that I use quite frequently - yes, they may be intended for school-aged children but they are helpful and written in a way that's clear (which, more often than not, I find sites specifically for adults can be a bit tech-y).

Maths is fun

Social Media for Functional Skills Mathematics

I've been teaching adults for 8 years almost. Firstly, we covered the Adult Numeracy qualifications from Entry Level up to Level 1 and Level 2 and then in September 2012 we switched over to the Functional Skills assessments from City & Guilds so this past year (ish) has been my first year teaching this new qualification/assessment.

So far it's not been too bad; a lot of it is common sense and pretty realistic examples that you would encounter in day-to-day life. However, I am really, really struggling with getting together some good resources for Adult Learners or for learners who need to have maths applied to them - in a way they understand it! So this blog is going to help me review and find those all important resources for my new intake of students in September 2013...!