“How I have most successfully and positively impacted on the professional practice of others.”

When contemplating delivering a short presentation with this title, I believe that what makes the biggest difference to the practice of others is – encouragement. Entering the Teaching Profession after years of working in the craft industry, I saw that while teachers give their pupils encouragement …… who was it that give the teachers encouragement? For most of the time, we work in our classrooms, for our classes – our colleagues rarely see our work, and while we comment positively on our pupils work – they pass no judgment on our work.

Encouragement makes the difference. Encouragement lifts our confidence and gives us resilience and drive.

For every initiative I have implemented at school, I have followed the process of ‘Engage, explain, expect.’

• Engage -I have trialled the initiative first so that I can talk with passion and conviction, and share the positive impacts – colleagues need to see the value and be keen to ‘give it a go,’ before you even ask them to.
• Explain – Staff need to feel that they can do the initiative – I aim to deliver the information and skills in a memorable way, and then be there to support, model and lead.
• Expect – I’m there to support, but also to challenge.

It seemed best to ask others to comment on the title of the presentation. The key words in the quotes for me are passion, creative, enthusiasm, enables, confident, inspired, exciting.  I copied colleagues comments into Tagexdo, and below is the cloud they made.

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I have looked at the progress and achievement of the 24 pupils who have achieved 4 or more certificates, plus a couple of Year 6 children who have nearly reached that target. The result were even more impressive than I had imagined they would be.  In school it is obvious that these pupils are confident in Maths and clearly enjoy the subject. They all play Mathletics at school, either at the Breakfast, Lunch or after school clubs, but they also have access to the Internet out of school. However some of the children have to share computer access with other siblings or visit relatives to access a computer – and so home access is sometimes limited.

These are the bullet points form the report – if you are interested in the full report please email me.

Children in report -

Year 3 – 4 children, 2 girls and 2 boys.
Year 4 – 8 children, 3 girls and 5 boys.
Year 5 – 4 girls and 3 boys.
Year 6 – 5 children, 3 girls and 2 boys.

Total of children = 24   with 12 girls and 12 boys.

Year 3

·         All 4 children in Year 3 who have achieved their 4^th Gold Award are at or above age related expectation in Maths.

·         The average level for the year group is 16.4, the groups average is  17.5.

·         They have an average progress point score of 2.5 in Maths – compared to the year group average gain of 1.7pts progress.

Year  4

·         Of the 8 children who play regular Mathletics only 1 child is below age related expectation, but she has achieved a 2A in Maths, compared to 1A Reading.

·         6 of the 8 children are at a higher level in Maths than Literacy, 1 child is performing at 3B in Maths, but only 2c in Literacy, and another at 3B in Maths is at 2b in Literacy. 2 children are on the same level in both Literacy and Numeracy.

·         Across KS2 these children have made an average of 5pts progress in Maths, compared to 3.1 pts average progress in writing

·         The average point score for the year group is 17.4, while the group score is 20.8 – an increase of 3.4 pts.

Year 5

·         1 child is at the same level English and Maths, the other 7 are all at a higher level in Maths than Literacy, 2 children are significantly better – 2c in Literacy, compared to 3c in Maths, and 3B Literacy, compared to 4B Maths.

·         5 of the children have already achieved a Level 4.

·         Across KS2 the group has made an average of 13.4 points progress – pupils are expected to make 12+pts progress by the end of yr6 – these children have made more than this by April in yr 5. In writing they have made an average of 10.4pts progress across KS2.

·         Average level for the group is 24.7pts – their cohort average is 22.5pts.

 Year 6

·         4 of the 5 children have achieved L5 in Maths, none have achieved a L5 in Literacy. All are at a higher level in Maths than in literacy.

·         3 of the children have achieved L5 in Maths, but are at L3 in writing.

·         Average progress in maths across ks2 is 17.6pts, compared to 13.2pts in writing .

·         The average level for the group is 30.6pts – compared to the cohort average of 25.7pts.

 

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The MAthletics Celebration yesterday was amazing – 65 Gold Awards were presented, achieved since out last celebration in February! We now have 3 children with 6 Gold Awards, and a family who between the Mums and children have 29 Gold Awards! The Celebration focused on the ‘You Matter’ and was a reminder of the importance of everyone of us, and our families, and it was fantastic to see so many parents celebrating their children’s achievements. Mr Mathletics and Mr Awesome, the characters from 2 Palm’s Mr Mathletics book, made a guest appearance to give the Mums their awards and presented Deane Tomlin from Mathletics with a copy of their book!

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Today we have another amazing celebration with 2 more children achieving their 6th Gold Awards, and an amazing 5 pupils who will receive their 5th awards! Also amongst todays 65 Gold Awards are the first six Mums to get Gold Mathletics certificates! Making a star appearance today will be Mr Mathletics and his friend Mr Awesome, the characters from the book entitled “Mr Mathletics”, written by 2 Palm.

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Today  I’m visiting BETT for the 1st time – I’m excited about what I will learn and the people I will meet – and I’m going to be talking on the Mathletics stand about how Mathletics has played a key part in motivating our pupils and giving them confidence in Maths – which now permeates across the curriculum. In case I’m ‘stage struck’ these are my thoughts, early in the morning before setting off!

Mathletics has done so much for us at Hovingham – I am really proud to be able to share our successes and achievements that have resulted from using this program.

Starting our journey.

Hovingham Primary signed up to Mathletics in September 2009.  MAthletics came and did a session with my Year group, and then I repeated this with each class throughout school and led a staff meeting on it.

I held a parents meeting, explaining what MAthletics was, and also asking for parental support for after school clubs. Many of our pupils do not have computer access at home – or share it with brothers and sisters, and so it has been important to set up clubs so everyone can get Internet access.

Initially, with the help of a TA, I ran all the clubs, but as staff have seen the impact of Mathletics, more have volunteered to run clubs and now each year group organises their own lunchtime club , and each evening is run by a different member of staff, with parents supporting – I only have the Friday after school club slot! Recently I have started a Breakfast club on Thursdays and a Parents breakfast club on Fridays! Soon we will be playing morning, noon and night!

We have just fundraised – using the Mathletics Four Nations Challenge, and the £3000+ is being used to buy Blackberry Playbooks to increase the club size to 40+ !

Keeping Going! 

Now we are into our 3rd year – and playing more than ever!

• Staff now have really seen the impact, and so encourage their children to play, use the site in lessons, set challenges, use it for assessments and praise the children for their achievements.
• Parents have seen the impact – those with the Internet at home, encourage their children to play, they support the clubs, and their hard work to help with the fund-raising was truly amazing. Some families set an alarm of their mobile phones to remind them it is a new Mathletics week!
• Children – with ‘Going for Goals’ as our SEAL theme – there is hardly a child who doesn’t reel off -’Gold Matheltics Certificate’ as one of their Goals!

Celebrating!

Every week in the Friday assembly, on the big screen, the children are shown the Mathletic Champion for each Year group – this encourage the children to aim higher than the 1000 points required for their weekly Bronze certificate.

They also then see the Mathletics Leader board – no 10 on the board is currently over 15,000 and the top score achieved in 1 week is 30,000! The Leader Board is also on display in the ICT suite – originally I had made it to 20,000, but have now had to extend it up to the ceiling to reach 30,000+!

Every half term we hold a Mathletics Celebration to award children who have received their Gold Certificates. Parents are invited, along with some special guests! Someone from the Mathletics team joins us for the celebrations – and we have had Ronnie the Rhino for Leeds Rhinos, Lucas the Kop Cat from Leeds United,  Danny Buderus – Rugby player, and then dignities like the Lord Mayor, the CEO of Education Leeds and the Lord Lieutenant!  The celebration involves lots of cheering and singing – and a cup of tea for the parents at the end, while the children take photo opportunities!

Moving forward…… 

In the entrance hall we now proudly display the ‘Matheltics Centre of Excellence!’ plaque, and Maths has a real buzz about it.  Every child is set at their appropriate level of challenge on Mathletics, and yet when playing together the interface looks the same, what ever level you are on – so they all feel a sense of achievement.

Next month we award our first 6th Gold Certificate, thats virtually a certificate every week since the day we started in 2009!

Impact – in 2009 our L4 SATS was 42% – in 2012 we are on target for 76% L4 – with about 20% aiming for L5! -now that’s worth celebrating!

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In 2 Palm at Hovingham Primary we have used the Wii in Literacy, using the game ‘Endless Oceans’ and in PE sessions, using the game ‘ Zumba.’ Both games have engaged the children – ‘Endless Oceans’ had the children all engaged and follow up work resulted in them describing fish they had encountered with meaningful adjectives. When using Zumba, all the class followed the moves – even though only one child was holding the remote. Although as staff we were only learning about how the console worked, the children – even those who were not familiar with a Wii were eager to use the controls and almost instinctively could navigate the games.

I have read articles about Games based learning - http://www.futurelab.org.uk/  & http://www.gamebasedlearning.org.uk/

http://ictmagic.visibli.com/share/VnXOc2  linking to the Pora Ora game website states -

Play and games add to learning the elements that ‘chalk and talk’ generally cannot, for example:

• Enjoyment
• Motivation
• Competition
• Persistence
• Resilience
• Problem solving in context
• Every child being engaged at their own level

With this in mind – I have looked at the wii game Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games 2012 – and considered how it could be used in Primary Maths. I think it will be most useful for lessons in KS2, and will endeavor to collaborate with KS2 colleagues and do some lesson study together on the use of the game.

Initial thoughts on how Mario and Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic games wii – could be used in Primary Maths.

This screen shot shows the range of sporting events in the main section if the game – there are further sections which pupils would no doubt enjoy exploring, but might be better saved for ‘Golden Time’ or used as rewards. The range of events shows that results will include data presented in the form of distances ( long jump) times and points. With in most of these sections there are further choices of games, and then once a game is selected there are options as to how the game is played – 1,2,3 or 4 player options – either with multiple controls or as turn taking.

When an event is selected from the main menu, it will often open another sub menu with a further choice of events. With the selection above – the 100m sprint was a simple event to play and was very quick, so the amount of time during a maths lesson spent playing the game would be minimal, yet sufficient to engage pupils and give the lesson a context from which to base the Maths.

The above is a screen shot of the results of a race on the 100, sprint. The game was easier enough for a complete novice like myself to play – and WIN! The results produce data for 8 runners and are times to the third decimal place.

Pupils could

• Estimate – before the race.
• Placing the scores on a numberline
• Round the times
• Find the difference between times.
• Find the average time
• Represent the data as a graph.
• Compare the data with 100m date from their own PE lesson, or from previous Olympic races.This screen shot shows the results from the Rhythmic Ribbon event – which you can see I did not master! The results for this event are in points – pupils could sort the events into those that have results as points, times, distances and goals. Again this event provides data with numbers going to the third decimal point.

This screen shot shows results from the 4x100m relay – so pupils could work out the average time for the team members, dividing the final times by 4. This screen shot shows results for the long jump – which of course is an event which the children could actually do themselves in PE and measure their own jumps to compare with those on the game, and those in actual Olympic competitions. Again all the Maths activities mentioned previously could be applied to the data from this game.

The games I have looked at so far all produce data with results which have 3 decimal places – so the maths would be appropriate for upper KS2 pupils – other games such as Badminton, Table tennis and Football produce scores of a much simpler nature, and these would be appropriate for data handling activities at KS1.  At present I haven’t used the game with pupils, I will update my blog when I do so. I am also very keen to hear from other teachers who have used this or similar games with Primary school pupils – especially in a Maths context.

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On Thursday the children dressed as their avatars and we held our Mathletics Celebration – awarding certificates to all the children who had reached their Gold Awards. Daniel in Yr 4 achieved his 5th Gold award – that requires 100 certificates! We now have 4 children in school who have their 5th awards!

Lucas the Kop Kat from Leeds United and Deane from Mathletics helped award the certificates and as usual we all enjoyed singing, clapping and celebrating together. We especially enjoyed this video -

Wizzard – I Wish It Could Be This-Maths Everyday

We sang these words as the chorus!

Well I wish it could be this Maths everyday
When the kids start winning and MATHLETICS starts to play
Oh I wish it could be this Maths everyday
So let the bells ring out for this Maths…..

Mathletics has kindly donated £200 to our fundraising for devices on which to access Mathletics and the Internet – and we have now reached our new target of £3000! Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to the appeal – it will mean that we can increase the number of places at our Mathletics clubs at lunchtime, afterschool and breakfast time! The devices will also be used in classes for group work.

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Thank you to all the businesses, families, staff – everyone who has helped us to raise funds for devices so we can increase the number of pupils who attend our Mathletics clubs, and provide Internet access which can be used in classes. Together we are now aiming for £3000!

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BBC Leeds

Listen to the interview which was live on Radio Leeds, when Hovingham was an ambassador school for the Mathletics Four Nations Challenge!

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