Last weeks guest posts from Julia Smith ( To Infinity and beyond ) and Ian Hollis ( Why I turned up for Saturday School ) went down a storm so I cheekily emailed Darren Macey at OCR to see if he fancied a visit to my blog … he said yes!! (and who wouldn’t? … have you noticed the blog has had a bit of facelift?) To be honest I went to a session of his at the MA conference in April and it was fab so I think it’s safe to say I’m a fan of his work! I particularly like the “check-in tests” that OCR have done recently and I know that they’ve made a lot more since (I wrote about them HERE ).
Anyway enough from me … Ladies and Gents, I offer you Darren Macey …
Since leaving teaching in 2014 and joining the subject specialist team at OCR, a large part of my time has been spent working on resources and CPD events to help support teachers in delivering the new mathematics GCSE. While nothing quite compares to standing in front of a class of students, touring the country delivering our CPD events, speaking at conferences and visiting schools certainly comes close. When it comes to rowdy behaviour and sneaky checks of twitter on badly hidden phones, a roomful of teachers could give some of my old students a run for their money! (MEL: I just don’t know who he could possibly mean!)
There is of course a great deal of trepidation around the new maths GCSE and teachers are feeling the pressure from the late changes to all of the awarding organisations accredited SAMs. Alongside this there are fears about the changes in style, level of demand and the volume of content. I am confident that by the end of June teachers will have greater certainty following the release of the finalised material from the awarding organisations and then everyone can concentrate finally on the really important question, not “whose exam should I take?” (Although if you were to ask me I would give you a predictable answer) but “What does this mean for my teaching?”
When Mel asked if I would be interested in writing a few words for Justmaths.co.uk I jumped at the opportunity having been a regular reader (and user of their resources) back in my teaching days, and, fresh from delivering CPD about developing resources in Birmingham, it seemed obvious to write a bit about this topic. The new GCSE may have a different feel to it, but in order to help students meet these new demands, no seismic shift is required. Teachers simply need to do more of the things good teachers do already! (MEL: hear hear!!)
In the new world of 9-1, content is no longer tagged to levels. We now have 3 broad buckets of standard, underlined and bold content, but there is no fine grading of content against the individual grades. As a consequence, it’s much harder to predict how the content will be examined and, on top of this, a question could be procedural, analytical, or problem solving in nature corresponding to the three assessment objectives. (MEL: Whilst topics are no longer tagged to levels/grades I wonder how long it will take for textbook publishers etc to continue to perpetuate the myth that certain topics are aimed at specific “levels” which suggests that they should only be taught to certain abilities! … why would you deprive students access to the more “sexy” maths?)
The savvy teacher will make sure that students’ experience of maths mirrors this structure in order to help them cope with the kind of surprising (but not unreasonable) question that links 2 separate areas of maths in an unusual way that would have many current GCSE students stumped and reaching for social media to vent their fury.
One of the most straightforward, practical things that can be done in a classroom is to ask questions constantly. “What is happening here?”, “Why are these things equal?”, “What is this question asking you to do?” It’s nothing radical, but it puts the onus on students to think about what is happening rather than just passively absorbing information. It shouldn’t matter whether you are teaching a bottom set or a top set, the principle is the same. As a teacher, you simply cannot teach them every example of a question they may see in a 9-1 GCSE, and students need to have been given the chance to experience forming their own conclusions as an integral part of their experience of maths, rather than as an extension activity. To some degree, the increasingly popular mastery curricula play in to this, allowing teachers to spend time coming at a particular topic from all angles and increasing students’ depth of understanding, but in order to be effective, a mastery curriculum must be carefully constructed and not seen as a magic panacea that will solve every problem.
Getting students to write their own questions is another great way of encouraging them to engage with concepts at a deeper level and one lovely yet simple activity is to put a mathematical object on the board and ask students to write 4 questions that give that answer. (MEL: I love this idea and its reminded me of “evil examiner” which I’ve used before, getting students to develop questions and markschemes using an image as a prompt … EVIL EXAMINER )
It can be mapped to all sorts of topics, it’s easy enough to do at some point in every lesson or set as part of homework, and it makes a great formative assessment strategy with misconceptions quickly exposed. The added bonus is that most students end up setting questions that are much harder than you could ever get away with and are often motivated to try and solve their neighbour’s offerings too.
The simple, but profound conceptual shift is to go from thinking about teaching the content to pass the exam, to using the content as a framework to teach the thinking skills listed in the assessment objectives, achieve that, and the exams should take care of themselves. If you need any extra help and support you can get in touch with me and the rest of the maths team via maths@ocr.org.uk, @OCR_Maths on twitter, or listen to the OCR maths podcast on iTunes. You can also read more of my blogging at OCR Blogs
MEL: Thanks Darren. Now who can I persuade for next weekends guest post? **thinking**
