Big Numeracy Day Plans:
I asked the leadership team at school if I could get
involved in the first ever National Numeracy Day (see https://www.numeracyday.com/) and they were very supportive in
giving me the go ahead. My aim was to raise the profile of numeracy around
school and enable students to see how they use numeracy skills in other subjects
as well as trying to make links with real life. So with a couple of weeks
planning, here’s what I did:
1.
Daily Puzzles in our Student Bulletin in the
lead up: To get students curious and generate a buzz, for two weeks leading up
I had a daily puzzle for forms to have a go at. I was bombarded with questions
and comments from both students and staff from the first entry (see below) – success! A buzz
was generated. Also I managed to sneak a Star Wars themed puzzle on May the 4th
(be with you).
2.
Form Time Quiz: The day before Numeracy Day, the
students took part in a form time quiz with some information about what would
be happening on National Numeracy Day. All the solutions were provided, it
started easy and got tougher so was suitable for all year groups (year 7 could do
the first ten and then stop, year 10 could go all the way through).
3.
National Numeracy Day itself: I asked my wonderful
colleagues to get involved by doing some numeracy in their lessons that day,
and to entice participation I ran a staff raffle, so the more often they managed
to do numeracy tasks with their students the more entries they had in the
raffle. To encourage students to participate, I held a student raffle. Staff
were given tickets to fill in for their nominated students who were most
engaged in their numeracy tasks. I had some numeracy leaders with badges just
like staff or visitor badges specially made for the occasion. The numeracy
leaders were given instructions to be my eyes and ears (unfortunately I was
teaching most of the day!) and I gave them forms to fill in (see below), they visited classrooms,
interviewed students and filled in the information so I could gather information about what had gone on around school. They pretty much ran the event for me, and I
wouldn’t have been able to do it without them!
How did it Go?
Numeracy in Other Lessons:
I suggested some ideas beforehand in our staff bulletin, and
I spoke to several departments when I couldn’t think of anything myself. All
departments seemed to have some ideas of how they could support National
Numeracy day in their subject, but I wanted to make sure I had ideas up my
sleeve just in case they needed any suggestions.
Here are some of the amazing things our staff did (what I
have managed to find out so far at least!) you will have to forgive if I have
missed details or over simplified what actually happened, I couldn’t be there
as I was teaching so this is all based on my Numeracy Leaders accounts:
·
Maths
I really do have to talk about Maths first,
I was initially split in two about whether I needed to do something special or
not. Surely in Maths we develop numeracy skills every day? But then surely also
as someone who is asking people to adapt their teaching for the day I should
lead by example? So I did think of what I could do to make a deal out of it in
my lessons. I decided to do several long multiplication and division questions.
I find I rarely spend time on these basics as we are looking at several other
areas of Maths and have so much to get through, it was nice to go back to
basics. To add a twist when going through the answers, the students timed me
using a big stopwatch on the board as I raced through the questions as quickly
as possible, while the students cheered me on/tried to put me off! It was great
fun and I made a point about discussing how I wasn’t that quick and accurate
when I was their age, but it has taken lots of practice. I also emphasised the importance
of confidence in these skills given there is a whole paper at GCSE they must do
without a calculator.
·
Science
Science naturally lends itself to Maths
anyway, so our Science department had plenty of ways to get involved. Year 9s
were measuring their pulses and plotting some graphs with the data they had
collected, as well as practicing substituting into energy
equations and
calculating proton, neutron and electron numbers. They were also doing
practical work collecting their own data, including sampling populations with
daisies outside (which students always love!).
·
Technology
A fantastic department supporting National
Numeracy day in plenty of different ways. Food tech were looking at recipes and
measuring ingredients, electronics were looking at potential dividers and calculations involving
watts and volts, studying ergonomics. IT were looking at statistics involving
social media. Again I was pleasantly surprised to see how much numeracy happens
in all the different technologies!
·
MFL
The wonderful colleagues in MFL had the
students enjoying performing calculations in French and Spanish! The students
were really positive and had loads of fun!
·
Drama
Drama were looking at designing sets and how
they can make scale designs of their sets to later design and build, as well as role playing different scenarios in which numeracy skills are used such as an exchange of money when someone is buying and selling in a shop.
·
English
I struggled with English when I was in the
initial stages of planning and talked to our not so secret amazing Mathematician
who also happens to be the head of English. He came up with the idea of
discussing the Monty Hall problem after reading an exert from The Curious
Incident of The Dog in the Night Time with his classes who then did the experimental
probability to test the theory. Also several of the teachers were using Venn
Diagrams and other graphs to compare and contrast different poems and stories.
Some even managed to wedge some numeracy in by designing storyboards, where
students had to measure the page, divide into even boxes and accurately draw
the structure before they did their storyboards – amazing!
·
History
There were comparisons between dates and
looking at differences between different times, including looking at pricing
from Victorian times compared to current. Some comparisons of how populations
have changed over time, discussing the capacity of Olympic stadiums. I was
impressed the different angles teachers had come from in introducing their
numeracy element!
·
Geography
Having studied Human Geography myself at
university, I knew Geography was yet another subject which lends itself well to
Maths. The wonderful Geography teachers were taking averages from climate
graphs and using them to compare the weather over various months. This involves
so many skills, reading information from tables, finding averages involves lots
of arranging, adding and dividing, them using the information to compare shows
why finding averages is useful in the first place and how it can be used in
real life.
What would I do differently?
I am thinking next year to run things fairly similarly as I
think it went pretty well. Staff will have ideas from this year and maybe more
for next year. I think I need to get more information about National Numeracy
across to both students and parents, as parents may well benefit from some of
their fantastic resources. I am thinking maybe putting something on the school
website and giving some information in assemblies- one of my colleagues did an
assembly on National Numeracy Day the day before which helped raise the profile
of the event for that year group. This is definitely something I would consider for next year, maybe see if the numeracy leaders want to be involved.
Also I would try to incorporate more fun ideas at break or lunch,
for example I could have times tables against the clock or beat the teacher at
break or lunch time. More ways to create buzz and maybe give the day a more fun
tone.
