This is the post I wanted to write yesterday.
When the GCSE was reformed back in 2017 me and Seager spent hours, weeks, even months thinking about what teaching “our kind” of students aiming to get them that magic grade 4 would look like. You may be new here and not be aware that we were used to our students getting numbers in the high 80s at a grade C and above in challenging contexts so we needed to get it right. Much of this success came from ensuring, lower down the school that our high prior attainers were sorted as they go into year 11 and then ensuring that our mid prior attainers ALL (and I mean ALL) got a grade C and above whilst then dragging quite a few of the low prior attainers with them.
We really wanted something that got those trickier students on what I call a “success, confidence, success spiral” upwards because for many of them they saw themselves as being rubbish at maths. For some of them, the word “maths” conjures images of complex formulas, intimidating equations, and the fear of getting the wrong answer. Some of them have a hatred of maths, they’ve had negative experiences … or more than likely, their parents have had negative experiences and sometimes we all know that that fear can be unintentionally passed on to children. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard from a parent “No point me helping them … I was never a maths person” … frustratingly, this kind of language supports the idea that mathematical ability is a fixed trait which we know isn’t true.
Over the years we’d come to see that a lack of confidence was creating a cycle … some students were using the mental energy avoiding work … whilst it was really needed for problem-solving and this was leading to poor performance … so the cycle continued … reinforcing the belief that “I’m bad at maths,” … we have to break that cycle at some point. Ideally you want this to happen lower down the school or even stop it ever starting by careful sequencing of your schemes of work, but when you’re faced with a group of students that for whatever reason aren’t where they should be something needs to change.
So why do we start our scheme of work in year 11 for our groups where we do … We know “two way tables” isn’t a topic as such, and frequency trees are “made up” maths (I jest … see an old blog post here) which we’ve got to teach but we wanted something that allowed us to give our students a little bit of fairy dust … a little bit of confidence. We’d always felt that it was the silent, often overlooked ingredient that separates those who persevere through a difficult problem from those who give up at the first hurdle.
It also meant that we could get them practising their basic numeracy skills without just doing a load of “sums” … the reality being that they need to do some practice but if they were faced with a sheet of 10s of questions all slightly different but to them, basically the same we would lose them. By including probability and adding in some conditional probability we could extend their thinking.
I am always amazed and love seeing students change their attitude towards maths, as their confidence grows … careful planning of the order of your scheme of work is important. Aside from the pre-requisite knowledge that needs to be taken into account, it’s also important that the difficulty is ramped over time and a Goldilocks principle is employed … don’t get me wrong, giving them work that is always easy is a no-no too …but if you prime them in the right way they’ll be ready for whatever you ask them to do.
Much has been written about positive mindsets and whether or not it makes a difference (going off on a tangent … if you aren’t following “disappointing affirmations” on Instagram … you need to!!) … I’m not a believer that positive affirmation posters will miraculously switch students on to maths … they won’t. One of the things I’ve taken from that whole movement is the idea that mistakes are a good thing. I even say that I want them to make the mistakes, here and now, with me so we can deal with any misconceptions rather than perpetuating them.
Anyway, when I read a post earlier today, when doom scrolling I felt myself nodding and it validated our thinking as to why we started where we did … additionally, whilst I like the snappier name of “positive feedback loop” .. I think I’ll stick with my “success, confidence, success spiral”.
Hopefully, I’ve given you some food for thought.
Back soon, with more year 11 shenanigans.
Mel x
