Re-conditioning Maths

As maths is my specialism at work, it holds a special place in my heart.
One thing that bothers me is the amount of learners who openly say "I'm crap at maths" and it is met with choruses of "me too", "I hate maths!".
I am often faced with learners who have had bad experiences of maths and who have ended up at our College, not through choice but because their GCSE grades were not good enough to study elsewhere.
They are, by definition of attending our college, not good enough. Not good enough at English, Science, History, French, DT and of course, Maths.
And of course, these are learners who have had it drilled in to them for the past 5 years, how important maths is to succeeding, to getting on the course you want, to getting the job and career you want. The result of this, is that low self esteem surrounds and is embedded in maths for these learners because their "failure" in it at school is what they associate with it.
So, my first and most difficult task is to try and help them re-condition their attitudes towards maths and make them feel positively about the subject and their own abilities related to it.


I try and make maths relevant to them first of all. So they can construct a meaning to the skill being learnt in their everyday lives.
I use a lot of positive reinforcement, for example, a star system, whereby learners could earn stars for positive behaviour and hard work, to eventually win a prize.
They need to be given external motivation for doing maths, in the form of games leading to rewards but I also need to find out what their internal motivations are and see if I can use them to motivate them in my class.


I also do a lot of work outside of my own classroom, helping other tutors embed maths in to their core curriculum because it is not just students that shy away from maths, it is tutors as well. I gladly deliver maths based sessions in curriculum areas to show the students that maths is relevant to their core programme and to show tutors that it can be done in imaginative ways.

Embedding English

Embedding English is crucial to help learners communicate properly with the world. So many times what people put on social media comes back to haunt them, through basic spelling errors or grammatical mistakes.
There is, without doubt, such an abundance of incorrect spelling and grammar on social media and that has crept in to the vernacular of young people, that we as tutors need to work twice as hard to ensure learners are aware of the correct way to write and speak.
I have worked hard to ensure my lessons embed functional English. I have observed English tutors to gain ideas about topics they are covering and how I could embed them in my starter or plenary activity. The advantage of this is I know I am developing skills that will help students within their subject areas and in their lives.
Furthmerore, introducing new words to learners is one of the most rewarding things you can do as a teacher. Many learners have a vast vocabulary by the time they reach 16, however, there are still many technical words you can bring to their attention. This is empowering to students, as they are able to understand new information. It is also surprising, as many learners think they "know it all", so giving that element of surprise catches learner's attention. Finally, it is engaging, as it gives learners a new way of expressing themselves.


I pride myself on a high level of English ability and set high expectations of English for learners, including correcting spelling, grammar and punctuation. I bring these high expectations into lessons and hopefully, this will influence learners.

Conflicting Views

This weeks lesson was all about curriculum, which is interesting enough for a teacher, however, not my favourite part of teaching.
The previous week, was about what we need to do in order to achieve our PGCE/Cert Ed qualifications, again, not the most thrilling of subjects but important nonetheless. 
It struck me as I participated in discussions in both sessions, how many of the things we are required to do for our PGCE, are not quite in line with industry guidance and standards, the most obvious of those would be OFSTED.

OFSTED no longer grade teaching - yet we will receive a grade on our certificates.
OFSTED no longer need to see a lesson plan - just evidence of planning.

These are two things which form a massive part of our PGCE and whilst looking at reasons for curriculum and what influences it, one of the stand out factors was "industry standards" it seems odd that our curriculum in PGCE is not in line with those industry standards.

This made me think about what work we give students and how it always has to be relevant to their course/profession for them to find value and meaning in it and therefore construct knowledge through applying learning to real life situations they have or will encounter.

This relates to constructivist learning theory and also motivational theories, which suggest learners motivations, such as wanting to get a good job, will influence their attitude and behaviour in lessons and therefore, their engagement and learning.

Using ICT To Create Independent Learners.

This week I used Google Forms to create a short assessment to give learners after my lesson.
This will bring several elements into my lesson.

1. ICT skills and encourage them to use their student emails for better communication.
2. Allow them to use their phones/ipads for class work which will hopefully engage them more.
3. Use of English in that they will have to read and answer questions.
4 Employability, as I will be asking them to complete a form correctly, as they might a job application form.
5. Introduce flipped learning as they will have a new assessment put in their inbox each week to compete before the lesson!

I hope that by giving them an assessment where they get instant feedback, this will encourage them to compete with one another, thus gamifying the lesson, giving them the ability to identify their own strengths and weaknesses and thus giving them ownership and responsibility for their learning.

Watch this space...