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!

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...!