Over the Leicestershire half term I went on quite a tour around Britain, talking about some of the ideas from my book #VisibleMaths. Starting in Peterborough on the first Saturday for the always fantastic Complete Mathematics Conference (#mathsconf), I was speaking about threading an idea through the curriculum in a coherent manner - in this case the idea of factorisation.
From there I had a couple of days at home before travelling up to North Yorkshire on Tuesday ready for working with teachers from the Esk Valley Alliance. We had a good time looking at addition, subtraction and division using representations. I particularly enjoyed this trip because my fiancee Rowan came with me and we had a lovely night away and a bit of time in York together.
A day off on Thursday was then the lead in to my really busy time. A short hop across to Birmingham on Friday lunch time for a session with maths teachers from Niksham High School, which was followed by jumping straight on a train to get down to Farnham ready for the excellent ResearchEd Surrey. Many people have commented that this ResearchEd was one of the best local versions for planning and organisation, and I must say I agree! I did a morning session there focusing on the idea of addition and how, with just two ways of making sense of what it means to add, all additions from Y1 to Y12 work in the same way (which was also mentioned in my latest TES blog). The session went down very well, and it was great to then spend the day listening to others talking about education.
Having arrived back in Leicestershire at 11pm on Saturday night, one week after my tour of England started, I then had the thrilling experience of my first ever trip to Scotland on Sunday and Monday. I must admit the sights walking out of Edinburgh Waverley station were simply breathtaking - I am not generally one to take photos of my surroundings, but even I had to capture some of those amazing visages.
The tour finished with my biggest ever audience - a little over 200 Scottish teachers of maths as part of the South East Improvement Collaborative joint INSET day. Having looked at the importance of making sense in different ways (using one of my favourite games!) we looked at making sense of addition and subtraction, and useful models for both of these operations.
A lot of people have suggested they would find a copy of the presentations helpful, so here they are:
Complete Maths Conference Peterborough (Saturday 12th October)
Esk Valley Alliance (Wednesday 16th October)
Niksham High School (Friday 18th October)
ResearchEd Surrey (Saturday 19th October)
SEIC INSET day (Monday 21st October)
From there I had a couple of days at home before travelling up to North Yorkshire on Tuesday ready for working with teachers from the Esk Valley Alliance. We had a good time looking at addition, subtraction and division using representations. I particularly enjoyed this trip because my fiancee Rowan came with me and we had a lovely night away and a bit of time in York together.
A day off on Thursday was then the lead in to my really busy time. A short hop across to Birmingham on Friday lunch time for a session with maths teachers from Niksham High School, which was followed by jumping straight on a train to get down to Farnham ready for the excellent ResearchEd Surrey. Many people have commented that this ResearchEd was one of the best local versions for planning and organisation, and I must say I agree! I did a morning session there focusing on the idea of addition and how, with just two ways of making sense of what it means to add, all additions from Y1 to Y12 work in the same way (which was also mentioned in my latest TES blog). The session went down very well, and it was great to then spend the day listening to others talking about education.
Having arrived back in Leicestershire at 11pm on Saturday night, one week after my tour of England started, I then had the thrilling experience of my first ever trip to Scotland on Sunday and Monday. I must admit the sights walking out of Edinburgh Waverley station were simply breathtaking - I am not generally one to take photos of my surroundings, but even I had to capture some of those amazing visages.
The tour finished with my biggest ever audience - a little over 200 Scottish teachers of maths as part of the South East Improvement Collaborative joint INSET day. Having looked at the importance of making sense in different ways (using one of my favourite games!) we looked at making sense of addition and subtraction, and useful models for both of these operations.
A lot of people have suggested they would find a copy of the presentations helpful, so here they are:
Complete Maths Conference Peterborough (Saturday 12th October)
Esk Valley Alliance (Wednesday 16th October)
Niksham High School (Friday 18th October)
ResearchEd Surrey (Saturday 19th October)
SEIC INSET day (Monday 21st October)
