Great to meet with OCR staff Amy Dai @miss-agd.bsky.social Sarah Gotting and Mary Fisher online yesterday to discuss the feasibility of 'maths mastery' approaches, including manipulatives and bar models, being integrated into GCSE maths examinations. Lots of issues with this and much to discuss...

Made me chuckle!

A new UK study which has tracked nearly 6,000 children for more than a decade has provided solid evidence about what parenting style is associated with the best outcomes. And the answer is: “authoritative”. seed.natcen.ac.uk?_ga=2.107965...

View of the Victoria Nile from the Black Lantern restaurant, Bujagali, Uganda. An evening of relaxation after a full-on week with schools out here.??

1/n Thought we had done our last Jinja Educational Trust (JET) trip, but they persuaded me and Karen to go again. We have spent the week travelling into JET schools, some 'off road' a long way from Jinja. Lots to share: children are stunning - so calm, focussed and well-behaved.

Using algebra tiles app to help Y10 understand what 'completing the square' looks like as we work on calculating intercepts on axes and turning points.

This is still one of my favourite videos I have made. A presentation I did for ‪@lasalleed.bsky.social‬ in 2023. Using @mathspadjames.bsky.social Decimals Blocks app. Fractals in action. I love apps that enable users to zoom in and out and to appreciate scale and connections.

Huge shout out to @draustinmaths.com for her resources free online. These were so useful for Y10 consolidation and practice this week. They are so well constructed 😍

Great question from a Singapore Maths competition for Primary 6. Requires a careful and systematic approach and also has triangular numbers within that analysis.😍

Great problem solving for Y3 and Y4 pupils. I also use some of these questions for my Y2 Maths Enrichment Club.

‘Learning that does not last was never really learning, it was mere exposure’. Another cracker from @markmccourt.bsky.social. In my role as an intervention teacher and as a tutor preparing pupils for GCSE I see this issue day in, day out.

It has been interesting helping some of our Y3 and Y4 pupils look at ways of solving these sorts of problems - this one is taken from a Grade 3 international maths competition.

Very excited to be asked to go out to Uganda this summer holiday to help the Jinja Educational Trust jinjaedtrust.com once again. They have recently taken on several new schools, so there is an increased need for support and training. Just booked flights 😁

Early number and counting are complex. I love this overview of key elements of the number and counting trajectory from @gfletchy Progression of Early Number and Counting youtu.be/BX9RH8MLOp8?si… via @YouTube

The disastrous periodic 'revolution' so beloved of snake oil salesmen i.e. politicians et al desperate to leave a legacy - which they do, but mostly not in a good way 😱 - as opposed to the careful 'evolution' model of other successful jurisdictions. As always, Mark hits the nail bang on the head!

(1) When we first introduced the Singapore maths pedagogy into our school in 2006, we realised very quickly how we needed to concretise the 'groups' in 'groups and items' as bits of paper. This made the groups something distinct from the items and they could be manipulated.

The words of a wise man who knows a LOT about teaching and learning.Too often I see an overcrowded maths programme being gone through at a ridiculous pace leaving many pupils trailing in its wake.

Using MS Whiteboard to make interactive prepared online apps to model directly content in the WRMH scheme. This unit from Y3 Autumn has the the videos, the workbook pages and links to app boards I have already set up and stored via links/codes.

Working with Y3 and Y4 Maths Clubs this week: as well as some UK First Maths Challenge questions, I will also share some Grade 2 and 3 problems from Singapore Maths competitions such as these: Grade 2 then Grade 3 - medium difficulty from the middle section of the papers. #UKMathsChat #MathsToday

Working with some of our Y2 pupils this week on problem solving. Used some questions from the @mathematicala.bsky.social First Maths Challenge. We could have used the answers given, or trial and improvement, but instead we built on their knowledge of bar models, and number rods. Polypad app.

Love using mathsbot.com Bar Modelling app from the mighty @studymaths.bsky.social for quickly making bar models. Perfect for this @mathematicala.bsky.social First Maths Challenge question I am doing with some Y2 pupils. Shines a light on the underlying connections. #UKMathsChat #MathsToday

Great work from all the people at UKMT posting on their YouTube channel the solutions to all the Junior Maths Challenge 2025 problems. Already downloaded and shared with my pupils in Y6/7/8, many of whom are too young to be on YouTube. SO helpful and really appreciated🙏 #UKMathsChat

A colleague in school wrote this down to share with me today. What are the odds! 😮 #UKMathsChat #MathsToday

Great resource for compasses and ruler CONSTRUCTION. There are other variations of the ones they demonstrate, but it's still useful. #UKMathsChat #iTeachMath #MathsToday #https://mathsisfun.com/geometry/constructions.html

The Interim Report does not say much about KS1 maths, but it does note that the curriculum at KS1 and 2 can 'lead to a struggle to cover all content with sufficient depth and negatively affects pupils’ ability to master foundational concepts' assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67e6b4...

How contentious will this one be? My favourite 100-square set up (this one doesn't go as far as 100, but you'll get the idea). #UKMathsChat #MathsToday #iTeachMath #EduSky

Following on from my recent post, an X post of mine from 2021 regarding connections between ratios, fractions as relationships, and expressing those in equations. I think this approach from a Singapore Y6 book gives pupils a great grounding #UKMathsChat

Just had a look at these. Will be using many of them with my intervention groups/individuals at school, and also useful for older students as well. Great teaching resources being produced by @drfrostresource.bsky.social team - thank you! #UKMathsChat

Some Y9-Y11 pupils I'm working with (not our school) seem to struggle with converting a proportion into an equation e.g. c:t = 5:9. They are uncertain how to end up with 9c=5t through logic/model/expressing as equivalent fractions. Is this common? #UKMathsChat

This B Section question, from an old UKMT Junior Olympiad paper I’ve just posted to pupils, is a nice example of a problem where pupils can use the general form of numbers eg a 2-digit number ab is expressed as 10a+b.#MathsToday

Although this is not a new @drfrostresource.bsky.social @drfrostlearning.bsky.social MathsPowerPoint, I have found it really useful when helping a Year 10 student to work through this topic in detail. More 'huge thanks' to the Dr Frost team🙏

In @thetimes.com today: After five years of challenging misogyny and sexual offending at secondary school, the charity Everyone’s Invited realised the problems are starting even younger.

A brilliant article from Sue Gifford (ECMG) in the latest @atmmathematics.bsky.social journal 295. Some of the the maths ELGs have no research evidence to suggest that they are achievable or desirable, and also a KS1 maths curriculum some of which is based on wishful thinking! #UKMathsChat

So proud of some of my Y7 and Y8 pupils coming up with a lovely SHAPE SHIFTING solution to this UK Maths Trust Junior Kangaroo question - question and official solution also shown below. #MathsToday #iTeachMath #UKMathsChat

Questions like this from free @thirdspacelearning.bsky.social GCSE practice papers also serve as great 'provocations' for younger pupils. #MathsToday

Fabulous venue at the Royal Society for our in-person earlymaths.org meeting yesterday on Spatial Reasoning. Exciting updates on work the group is doing, presentations on recent research and fabulous practice. To top it all off we then headed to Browns for (champagne for some of us) afternoon tea.

🔦There's a lot going on in #STEM #Education right now. So, it's time to bring out our #superpowers. 🦸‍♀️ PhET Studio is coming soon! Stick around - feature announcements start Thursday, March 13. #EdTech #ComingSoon #InteractYourWay #edusky

Huge THANK YOU to @draustinmaths.com for these new 'completing the square' practice sheets - perfect timing for me and really appreciated!

Pupils had lots of hands-on experiences for completing the square with Amplify Polypad algebra tiles, then I was able to use part of a @DrFrostResource PowerPoint to make them a summary/review/revision video of 'Logan's method' for them to access. Didn't have this back in 1973!

Yesterday, I managed to fit in a 1-2-1 session with one of our Y8 pupils working through the Junior Mentoring scheme materials from #UKMT Lovely questions such as these two examples here- such a great resource. #MathsToday

Wonderful to have 18 Year 3 pupils turn up at 8 o'clock this morning for Maths Enrichment Club. Lots of enthusiasm and ideas for solving tricky problems. 😍 #MathsToday

Tiny part of the introduction in a series of videos I am making for Y10 leading to solving monic quadratic equations by completing the square. Those pupils who have not used algebra tiles before have found this to be a lightbulb moment.

'Teachers are leaving teaching in droves...you know I can't do this any more...' A tiny sample from 'Kids and Screens: What You MUST Know' from Dr Brenna Hicks. Link to full video in thread below.

Babies need humans, not screens...the constant absorption of on-screen images and messages affects their attention span and focus. www.unicef.org/parenting/ch...

Had a fascinating conversation with a nursery teacher of almost 30 yrs. She was saying one of the biggest changes she’s seen in recent years is the number of children who say ‘no’ and simply refuse to follow any adult instruction. She said it used to be super rare but not now.

Great to see so many of our Y1 parents come to our Maths talk after school this week. As well as explaining how we teach maths, and giving them hands-on experiences, I also explained the importance of Executive Function and their role in developing that. Also talked about screens/children.

We cannot still blame Covid for the change in young children...something fundamental has happened... www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Helping a Y10 pupil from another school who has never seen or used algebra tiles, real or virtual. Of course, using them was a light bulb moment for her and suddenly it all began to make sense. Why do some teachers think that using manipulatives stops at the end of primary? #iTeachMath #UKMathsChat

Some of my Y7/Y8 requested a HOW TO video for this UKMathsTrust Team competition question. I'd already scrawled out a solution as I always do before I set it, but decided to ask ChatGPT to set out a neat solution for me so that I could then just video over that. It got it wrong!

This Grade 1/Grade 2 International Maths competition question enabled me to begin to introduce some Y2 pupils to the magical world of Pascal's (Yang Hui's) triangle and some of its hidden secrets. #iTeachMath #UKMathsChat