How many Rob Smiths?

Last week I put a shout out to see if anyone wanted to write a guest post and lo and behold Rob Smith ( @mrrismithmaths ) stepped up to the plate … this isn’t the Rob Smith ( @RJS2212 )  lots of you know on twitter for spamming your timeline recently with requests for one word to describe maths (as part of Billy Adamsons @Billyads_47 ) quest to produce a wordle!). This is a totally different Rob Smith. Seriously how many Rob Smiths can the world take …. However this one seems much more sensible (to the “other” Rob Smith – I love ya really!). It all feels a little “will the real Slim Shady please stand up!” but anyway, back to the point.

So Rob Smith offered to write a post on his views on “Writing a ‘Mastery’ Scheme of Work for the New Maths Curriculum.” Looking at the way other departments work and into the minds of heads of department is something all teachers are really interested in and I too have some views about “mastery” – HERE IT IS  so dear reader I offer you Rob Smith … soon to be Head of Maths at Northampton Academy.

Having recently become a first time father to the handsome baby Isaac, I didn’t think that my tired body and mind would allow myself the time and focus to write a new Mastery Curriculum, but here it is! Ever since leaving my post as Key Stage 3 Coordinator at a successful school in Milton Keynes in 2012 to take up my first Head of Department position at a Free School (don’t hate me please!!!) in Bedford, I have been trying to construct the perfect ‘Mastery’ Curriculum. It has to be said that my first attempt, whilst at the Free School, was only a partial success. I wonder how many Maths Colleagues from around the country have been in the same position as I was, it is a BIG job!! In September 2014 I took up the role of Key Stage 4 Coordinator at Northampton Academy, and I look forward to becoming Head of Maths at the Academy next year. I am now at the stage where I think that I am on my way to having designed a SoW that meets all of the needs of our students – I would love to get some constructive criticisms on how I can improve it!

 Stage 1: Research

Throughout this journey I have been constantly combing the web for useful nuggets of information and opinions as to how others have gone about the task of writing a SoW for the new curriculum. There were so many questions to ask at the start of the process:

•  Why don’t we just use a SoW that comes directly from the exam board? I’m not convinced that the ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach works. I had to find something that works for our students. I also wanted a 5 year journey, not separate SOW for KS3 and KS4 as I’d been using in my career so far. (MEL: hear, hear … students are on a 5 year journey!)
•  What is ‘Mastery’ anyway and does it work? Surely it’s boring for the students (and teachers?!) to spend so long on topics? Here there is only one direction to point you in – the Mastery Master himself @mrreddymaths blog here. Having spent some time with Bruno, I can see why he has been so successful – he is very clear in his vision of what a curriculum should look like, I hope that I can put my vision across as clearly!
•  Who else has tried a ‘Mastery’ curriculum? I strongly recommend reading @mrbartonmaths blog on writing a new scheme of work here. It’s epic, but certainly worth the time and effort to read! Also @workedgechaos here, the NCETM here and Kangaroo Maths here.
• Should we buy into a scheme like Mathematics Mastery (@mathsmastery): This was the toughest decision for me – Why reinvent the wheel right?? Clearly Mathematics Mastery is an excellent ready-made teaching framework, that also comes with classroom resources, et al. I think that it is the Control Freak inside of me that decided not to sign up for this – I don’t know if I could have handled having so much prescribed to me. (However definitely worth noting that I have spoken to colleagues that have signed up to the programme and they couldn’t speak more highly of it!!)

 

 

Stage 2: Deciding on the philosophy of my curriculum.

 Having spent the best part of 3 years considering what I want my curriculum to look like, you’d think that I should by now have a clear vision of what it was going to look like! Here are the key principles that I am sticking to:

1. Depth of understanding over breadth of knowledge: Spend more time on fewer things. As a department we agree that all teachers will move their class on to the ‘next’ topic at the same time. Instead they will give their class experience of Rich Tasks (we’ll get onto that later!), more practise and further applications. We need to strike the correct balance between practise of key skills, and discovery and inquiry. I am particularly interested in embedding some of the ‘Inquiry Maths’ tasks from Andrew Blair @inquirymaths.
2. Each half term has a different focus, with Year 7-10 working at different levels on that focus: I believe that this will encourage greater depth of planning and more collaboration from the teachers and will hopefully encourage pupils to chat to each other about the content too. I plan to have the scheme of work on an interactive Excel Spreadsheet so that appropriate activities are hyperlinked to each topic to ease the burden on planning.
3. Essential Rich Tasks: Every half term will have a ‘low-entry, high-ceiling’ rich task that all students will complete. Teachers will do this task first in department time so that they can come up with a series of probing questions and extension tasks, and also so that they are in a better position to be able to guide the students. The planning of these tasks should go into questions and prompts rather than powerpoints and worksheets. These tasks will be marked using a WWW, EBI policy – it is fine for them to be peer assessed and not scored, as such. There will also be a bank of ‘Other Rich Tasks’ for use when a teacher feels that they have exhausted all of their own resources on a particular topic. Top sets will also complete ‘training’ for the Maths Challenge.  I hope to collate these Rich Tasks in the near future, I have sourced them from places such as nrich, but they do need editing to make them more classroom friendly! Kangaroo maths, Mr Barton Maths , Solvemymaths, resourceaholic and Don Steward’s Median blog. have a good collection of links.
4. Homework: 1 essential homework per fortnight. This is an idea that I got from Craig Barton’s blog that all students will complete 1 centrally produced homework each fortnight, comprising of 20 marks from the current topic and 10 marks from content that students have been taught previously. The results of these assessments will be kept centrally and will hopefully promote a greater importance of homework amongst the students. Teachers will also supplement this by setting their own homework too. These homeworks, along with all assessments will be kept in an assessment portfolio which will be with the students every lesson – they can add to this portfolio with exemplar work in any lesson.
5. Assessment: Once per half term. Regular assessments will take place each half term, with a ‘baseline’ test at the start of year 7 and a larger, more holistic test sat at the end of each year. Year 10 and 11 will sit a whole exam paper each half term, in order to familiarise themselves with exam content and question style.
6. Importance of numeracy: All year 7’s, 8’s and 9’s will have additional ‘Numeracy’ lessons – 1 per week, during which time they will work on written methods and all of the numeracy that supports the learning of the current topic. This time will also be used to work on ‘Maths Challenge’ style questions.

Stage 3: What’s going to be taught when?

Probably the most important part of the planning process for me was deciding on how to lay out content to allow for sufficient structure. I envisaged a scheme of learning that took the best parts of the Mastery Curriculum that I’d seen from Bruno Reddy at King Solomon Academy, and merged them with the traditional, cyclical approach.

When I sat down to decide the order in which things would be taught under my model, I knew that I wanted to start with number, however I was aware that I do not want to put pupils off maths by not starting with the ‘new’ stuff! I believe that this can be overcame by the use of Rich Tasks which enable students to practise the basic skills that are needed, whilst developing the inquiring minds that we aim to foster. For example What’s Possible? From nrich, this from nrich is a useful tool for mapping the content. As I have said before, I firmly believe that the planning for these tasks has to be collaborative and has to focus on creating prompt questions for the students, we should aim to get the team talking about the maths and collaborating. As pupils do more of this type of task, hopefully thy will gain more confidence and will be more able to come up with their own inquiry questions.

I want each year group to be working on the same element of mathematics at the same time, to enable the best possible opportunities for collaboration and high quality lesson planning. The table below shows a brief outline of what will be studied at each time of the year.

Whilst I recognise Bruno Reddy’s comment that minimally different topics should be separated, I believe that sometimes there is a need to give pupils a deep understanding of the bigger picture. I hope that I’ve got the balance right here, separating minimally different topics where I have deemed it appropriate – I have kept ‘averages’ together, whilst separating ‘area of circles’ and ‘circumference of circles’.

Remember: It is important to keep students well practised in ‘the basics’ – I will achieve this through cumulative starters and through the supplementary numeracy lessons. Students cannot solve problems (or indeed access the problems) if the basic foundations of mathematics are in place.

I’d love some feedback on the Curriculum that I have put together – it is still very much in the development phase (I certainly need to add in success criteria for each ‘topic’), but I hope to roll it out in September.