the secret of numeracy
TRANSCRIPT
The secret of numeracy
Supporting non-specialists to
promote numeracy across the curriculum
What’s the difference between
numeracy and maths?
Don’t call it numeracy!
• Numeracy is vital, but irrelevant across the curriculum
• Much better to focus on conceptual understandings and ‘mathematical thinking’
Why do students struggle with maths?
The effect of ‘affect’
• Being bad at maths is socially acceptable
• Few students are cognitively incapable of passing maths at GCSE
• But it makes some students ‘feel stupid’.
Learning vs activities
• Performance is not the same as learning:
962• Learning happens when you think
hard about subject content• Anything which occupies working
memory reduces our ability to think• Memory is the residue of thought.
What not to do
What not to do
• English: count the number of lines in a poem
• Art: calculate the amount of paint needed to cover your canvas
• PE: time yourself running 100m, take your pulse, draw a graph…
• History: Multiply the number of King Henrys by the number of King Georges
Thinking like a mathematician
• Number • Operations & calculations
• Shape, space & measures• Data handling
Limited applications across the curriculum
Useful everywhere
Make the implicit explicit
Thinking like a mathematician
• Identifying structures & relevant data• Being systematic• Searching for patterns• Thinking logically• Predicting & checking• Breaking down problems into smaller parts• Interpreting solutions in context of problem• Estimating to check likelihood of answers
The golden ratio: 1.61803398875
A way of understanding the world
Is all beauty mathematics?
A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns … The mathematician’s patterns, like the painter’s or the poet’s must be beautiful; the ideas like the colours or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test.
GH Hardy
So, what can we do in lessons?
6 degrees of separation
How do you get from here…
…to here?
6 degrees of separation
1. Select a topic or theme
2. write 1-6 down a page
3. Put your topic at no. 6
4. Get from the stimulus to your topic in no more or less than 6 steps
6 degrees of separation
Get from this clip to your chosen topic in 6 steps
Asking mathematical questions
• How could you sort these.......? • How many ways can you find to ....... ? • What happens when we ......... ? • How many different ....... can be found?• What is the same/different? • Can you group these ....... in some way? • Is there a pattern? • How can this pattern help you find an answer? • What do think comes next? Why? • Is there a way to record what you've found that
might help us see more patterns? • What would happen if....?
Domain specific thinking (with maths)
• specialising – trying special cases, looking at examples
• generalising - looking for patterns and relationships
• conjecturing – predicting relationships and results
• convincing – finding and communicating reasons why something is true.
Organising information
Felines Rodents
Canines
Comparison alley1st thing
2nd thing
What they have in
common
Dulce et Decorum
Est
In Flanders Field
Shall I compare… thee…
to a summer’s
day?
Macbeth
ambition
friendship
Duncan
murder
Lady Macbeth
The witches
Banquo
predictions
power
Macduff
revenge
The person below the ‘Quaker Christians’ set
himself alight in protest at the Vietnam
War
‘Quaker Christians’ goes in the centre right hand square
The three aspects of Christian Just War
Theory make up the centre column
The person below the ‘Quaker Christians’ set
himself alight in protest at the Vietnam
War
The only two square that relate to Islam are
both in the left hand column
The statement ‘war must be started by a legitimate authority’
goes next to the name ‘Norman Morrison’
The two word phrase that describes those people who
refuse to fight in a war based on their moral
compass goes is in the right hand column
One aspect of just war theory is that ‘the
good must outweigh the evil’
The name for the small band of Christianity that believes there is a light in everyone and so do not believe in taking life under
any circumstances is underneath the phrase
‘conscientious objectors’
The phrase ‘Just War Theory’ goes in
the top left hand square
The name for the Muslim struggle to achieve outer peace which may involve
going to war to protect your country or religion is written
in the left hand column
The name for the combination of inner and outer jihad is on
the bottom row Norman Morrison
War must be started by a legitimate authority
Just war Theory
The struggle for peace
Waging war must be the last resort
The good must outweigh the evil
Conscientious objectors
Quaker Christians
Outer Jihad
Presenting information
• Maths provides new ways of seeing the world:– Graphs– Timelines– Flow charts– Graphic organisers– Pie charts
Tension graphs
Accuracy matters
• What does maths teach us about attention to detail?
• Getting it right vs. getting it done• Where can we apply the concept of
ERROR CHECKING across the curriculum?– Dates in history?– Notation in music?– Learning lines in drama?– Punctuation in English?
The mathematics of writing
• Grammar, like mathematics, is sequential.
• Subject, Verb, Object (or other)
I am a teacher• Construct a sentence that follows
this pattern: P O, S V O C, P O, S V O
VS O
Understanding scale
• A million seconds = 11 ½ days• A billion seconds = 32 years
Seeing relationships
www.informationisbeautiful.net
Key points
• Being unable to think mathematically is not socially acceptable
• If it doesn’t help pupils think about subject content, it’s a waste of time
• Make the implicit explicit• The secret of numeracy… is that
there’s no such thing.
