Wednesday 26 September 2012

What annoys me most ...!

Watching The One Show. Fiona Bruce mentioned what a torment it is helping her 10-year-old son with maths. Chatting things over with my son got me thinking about how to help parents help their children with maths, and how I need to teach teachers how to help parents do that ... I finally worked out what annoys me most! I'm glad that parents are being invited into schools to see demonstration lessons on how maths is taught. But I worry about how these lessons are presented. One Numeracy Consultant told me that she encourages teachers to focus entirely on how schools teach now and ignore all other methods. There is a problem with that, very clearly explained in Richard Skemp's wonderful The Psychology of Learning Mathematics: if you don't start where people are, you'll never get them on board! What a wasted opportunity!