2. Mathematics Department
Headline Figures
Our students routinely lead Cambridgeshire both in terms of
percentage A*-C and value added measures.
100
90
80
70
A*-A
60
Ntl Ave A*-A
50
40 A*-B
30 A*-C
20 Ntl Ave2 A*-C
10
0
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 Current
Cambridge Meridian Academies Trust
Swavesey
Village College
3. Our priorities
• Mixed Ability Ethos • Support sessions – lunch, after
• Differentiation school, holiday revision
• Group-work • Intervention – 1:1, mentoring, targeted
after school, class groups
• Collaborative planning, sharing
resources, rich & engaging tasks • Links to Primary schools – numeracy &
L6 maths extension
• Embedding STEM Activities
• Research – Involvement in
• Tracking progress – learning logs, skills
projects, masters degrees
checks
• Use of technology – IWBs, smart
• AfL (How to improve H2I)
phones, ipods, student voting, email
• Consistent home-learning experience
• Single gender groups
• Individual pathways
4. Key strategies we have adopted
• Embedding rich, open 'multi-faceted' • Using tasks that require higher order
tasks into our SoWs thinking
• Extending this approach to home • Establishing group-work: stabilising
learning groups, accountability, equitable
• Use of prompts to scaffold & extend learning, using roles, 'Working in the
tasks middle‘, group-boards on the walls of
two classrooms (so far)
6. Effective group-work
and mixed ability
teaching
Group structures and
roles
Group-work is particularly
valuable with wide ability ranges:
students can use each other as
resources allowing higher-order
thinking skills tasks (Cohen et al, 1989)
Advantages in maintaining ‘stable’
groups allow a build up trust and
respect for each other (Blatchford et
al., 2003)
7. Effective group-work
and mixed ability
teaching
Group structures and
roles
Describe one thing this task helped
you improve or learn today:
‘Separate roles really helped this task’
‘The way the task was structured’
‘Role Cards - cooperation’
‘Different Roles’
8. Strategies adopted through group-work research
Working in the middle
Establish group
accountability:
require students to
put away their Silent group
individual books and Starter ‘creative cooperation task
create a group thinking’ task
product. This avoids Group mean from
individuals working individual tests
separately without Group marks on
contributing to the graded past paper Qs Individual Self
group effort. Assessment
11. Providing Support and Intervention:
Personalised learning for students who experience barriers
to learning mathematics
“Aiming to Ensure At Least Expected Progress for All”
Team-up Tuition
• After school individual tuition with students from Cambridge University
Maths Mentoring Programme: Year 7 and 8 Numeracy Intervention
• Weekly 20 minute peer mentoring scheme for • Weekly small class covering essential numeracy with
year 7s paired with year 10s extra TA support
Extra Mathematics Class per Week Study Centre Groups
• For targeted groups students in years 9 to 11, on a • Additional supported tuition and small group work for
rotation basis selected students
12. Home Learning
Extending learning beyond the classroom
Consistent
homework
tasks set for
all. Either
levelled tasks
for students to
select
appropriate
tasks or open
projects where
differentiation
is by outcome.
Teacher, peer and self assessment
13. Tracking Progress
Individual records – Learning Logs
Every student has a learning log for the
year. This contains:
• All levelled objectives for self
assessment (RAG)
• A Progress Chart
• Teacher, peer and self assessment of
homeworks
• Space for detailed notes on topics
• Records of skills check
levels, progress and How 2 Improve
(H2I)
• Key words for each topic (in
development with whole school
literacy)
14. Tracking Progress
Cohort Data and Skills Checks
Monitoring between
assessments has a
focus on progress
from pre to post
skills checks.
Use of T-/T/T+ to
identify
underachievement
and need for
intervention and
students to
challenge further
15. Teaching to a Mixed Ability Classroom: Enriching
Mathematical Learning and Building Cross-Curricular Links
“Aiming to Broaden Mathematical Ideas”
Raising Achievement in GCSE Mathematics
• CHF and TS worked with the NCETM to produce case studies of
using rich tasks
Involvement in Educational Research:
• Jo Boaler (University of Sussex)
• Jenny Gage (University of Cambridge)
• EpiSTEMe Dialogic Teaching (University of Cambridge)
Collaborative Work with Nrich and Stem Nrich
• CHF, TS and JCB leading workshops at teacher inspiration events
• Publishing resources, tasks and lesson structures
• Lesson transcripts published from lessons taught by CHF and TS
16. STEM: “A bottle filled with a different ratio of water to air will
produce a different note when air is blown across the top”
A maths practical in a
science lab!
