Numeracy Across the Curriculum (ITT/NQT Session)

On Monday 4th Nov 2013 I delivered a 'numeracy across the curriculum' session for my school's ITTs and NQTs. I was only given 30 minutes for this as the other half of the hour session was delivered by one of my English colleagues on 'Literacy across the curriculum'.

For the session, I used the following Prezi and included a number of ideas for getting numeracy into other subject's lessons. These ideas I will explain further here to support the ITTs and NQTs at my school, and also for anyone else who is interested in those ideas that I presented...I hope they are of use!


*Feel free to flick through the Prezi I created for the session. Throughout the presentation: I referenced the National Numeracy Organisation; briefly explained what numeracy was; gave my colleagues a question to attempt and used this to highlight the different ways students will go about solving the same problem; suggested ways in which you could/should be using numeracy in lessons; provided examples of what could be used to help (data from SIMS and a guide to the levels in Mathematics [from another colleague in my department]) and then presented 12 ideas, all of which I will explain further here (due to having to whizz through them in the session)!*

Idea #1 - Scrabble Tiles
I wrote a blog post on these previously which can be seen by going to --> http://goo.gl/rxCbrK

The Scrabble Tiles can be used in any subject by getting students to find/create key words for the lesson. The numeracy element comes in by getting students to find the sum of the numbers on their tiles. They could then even multiply this by a 'number of the day'. You could get students to estimate the highest total score for a word in your subject, would it differ in other subjects? Why? You could award extra points to students if they come up with a key word for the particular topic you are teaching; you could even award a percentage of their score, for example students could get 10% extra if the word is related to the lesson.

Idea #2 - Use the Dates

This idea is particular useful in subjects like History and English where you have historical dates to refer to or historical figures/people to mention. Get students to work out how many years it has been since certain dates, since the death of historical people. In Geography you could ask students to find the number of years since an event happened. You could get students to work out the age of people who have died by giving them their year of birth/death; you could go as far as working out how old they were in years, months, days, hours etc and could discuss conversions between time here. You could ask students how many days it is until events in the future too. For example, in RE, religious festivals such as Divali, Christmas, Eid, Easter etc. In Design and Technology (or Art) you can get students to create Gantt Charts for their projects and work out the number of days allocated to certain aspects of their projects (this idea came from @kutrahmoore).

Here's an example of a Gantt Chart. These could be used for any subject where an extended project is used - or for revision purposes in terms of creating a revision timetable!






Idea #3 - Pie Chart of the lesson

This could be used to great effect as a plenary activity. Get students to draw a pie chart to sum up the lesson. This activity could be differentiated for students by either keeping the timings simple (i.e. half the lesson I...(half the pie chart), a quarter of the lesson I...(a quarter of the pie chart), an eighth of the lesson I...(a quarter of the pie chart) etc) or getting students to use smaller time intervals, i.e. I spent 4 minutes reflecting on my progress (so a 24 degree slice would be needed to represent this). In order to do this the students will need to divide the 360 degrees in a circle up accordingly; 1 minute of the lesson would be represented by a 6 degree slice of the pie chart.

Idea #4 - Graphing Progress

Again, as a plenary activity in a lesson, or perhaps even kept at the start of every new topic in their exercise books, students can create a suitable graph/chart to 'graph' their progress throughout a topic. Here they can practise their skills of drawing suitable axis, with a consistent scale, and plotting points on their graph across a given time period. You can discuss here with students the criteria that they'll put on their 'progress' axis, whether it be a grade, level or other scale. You could also discuss the benefits of one graph/chart over another.

Idea #5 - Top Trumps

I love top trumps cards and have used them in my lessons to help engage lower ability students in their learning. I have a particular set of 'animal substitution top trumps' cards that I use regularly when teaching the topic. How these can be used in other subjects is by using key people/events and getting students to create their own top trumps cards and assign people/events certain values based on some categories you/they decide upon. For example, in English, you could take all characters from a particular novel (lets say Of Mice and Men) and then get students to rate them on their: likability, nobility, strength etc. Students then assign each character a value for these categories based on what they have learnt about them by reading the novel and then they'd play the game of top trumps in the traditional manner. To make this even more numeracy related you could get students to create sums/calculations instead of just having a single number. This way students would have to first do the sum before deciding whose card was the winner. In Science, this can be done with the Elements, perhaps taking proton number, mass number, number of electrons etc as the categories.

Here's an example of the 'Animal Substitution Top Trumps' I use...

With these top trump cards you give students values for a, b and c to substitute into the expressions on the cards. I change the values throughout the activity (to negatives, decimals, fractions etc) and then award 'rewards'/'house points' for those students holding my favourite cards (the chicken, pig and hedgehog - just in case you were wondering).

You can download this resource on the TES by clicking on --> http://goo.gl/HTzasQ









Idea #6 - Line Ups (range, median etc)

This can be used in a number of subjects where your students have to measure anything. For example, if they need to measure their heights for a given activity, or perhaps their heart rates in PE. Get them to line up in ascending order and then ask the class to work out the range, median and mode of their heights, heart rates, hand spans, weights etc. In History, you could take this idea further to make a timeline out of students for a certain event, say World War I or II, hand out to them key events, or get them to create these themselves, and then get them to line up in ascending order. Then you could calculate time frames between certain events. I can see this working well in PE too for the speeds at which they complete certain events/tasks.

Idea #7 - Venn Diagrams

Venn Diagrams can be used to compare any 2 (or more) things. In English, they can be used to compare characters in a book. In Science, they can be used to compare elements, In PE, they can be used to compare sporting events. In History, they can be used to compare historical events. In Geography, they could be used to compare natural disasters. In Music, they can be used to compare songs/bands/artists. In Food, they can be used to compare recipes. And so on... . Venn Diagrams can be used as either a starter activity or a plenary. They can also be used for revision purposes if asked to 'compare and contrast...'.

I have a resource on the TES I use when introducing Venn Diagrams (or HCF and LCM) that acts as a starter activity to get students to compare...Batman and Superman or...Shrek and Donkey. Download and adapt them here... http://goo.gl/Qh7NuQ

Idea #8 - Calculator Stories
This idea stems from a resource I found on the TES, you can download that resource here --> http://goo.gl/1AJ80j

Here it is too...

As you can see by the image to the left, this involves using a calculator to perform certain calculations to which the answers can be read by turning the calculator upside down in the 'old school' fashion where kids would type 5318008 to spell out 'boobies'!

You can therefore take any piece of text, omit any words you can spell by typing in numbers on a calculator and then turning it upside down, and then create a sum for students to answer to reveal the word in the text. You could get students to create their own or prepare them for them as a short starter activity. This would get them reading some key information for your lesson whilst practising their calculator skills. Check whether your students have their calculators on them at all times or whether you'll need to borrow some; they should all have them with them in our school (as long as they have Mathematics on the same day as your lesson)!?

Idea #9 - Cash Reward/Behaviour Tax
an idea I recently read in @TeacherToolkit's #100ideas book...

The idea is that, perhaps as part of a behaviour management strategy, at the start of a lesson you give all students a certain amount of 'money'. I have some fake £10 notes printed out that I use with ratio activities, or you could use money from board games, print your own etc. Then, throughout the lesson, perhaps when giving out reward points or warnings (in line with your school's behaviour policy), you then issue a reward cash value or 'tax' to the students. This tax could be 10%/25% of the money they have at that time in the lesson, or could just be a determined amount, say £20; a discussion here about which would be the greater amount would be lovely! The students at the end of the lesson with the most money could then 'trade' them in for a small prize or even receive an additional reward point.
I have used raffle tickets in the past in this manner (give them out for good behaviour/work, take them away for poor behaviour) and then draw a ticket at the end of the lesson and that person wins a prize. Here you can discuss the probability of them winning, based on the number of raffle tickets they have!

Idea #10 - Bananas!
I have no idea why this activity is called 'bananas' but I love it nonetheless...it is an idea I found through @TickTockMaths' '59 Starters' resource available on the TES. I blogged about it very recently at --> http://goo.gl/b9h5k1

Here's the idea...and this can be used in any subject...

You basically choose a few categories, related to your subject/lesson, and then pick any letter of the alphabet and get students to think of a key word for each category that begins with the chosen letter of the alphabet. How you get in some numeracy is that one of the categories could be 'a mathematical word' or 'a word to do with numeracy'. Get students to define their chosen word and say how/when they'd use it in their Mathematics lessons.

Idea #11 - Estimate the lesson

Estimation appears naturally in every day life. We estimate the amount of time it's going to take us to complete a journey, the amount of time we need to leave for certain tasks, the amount our shopping is going to amount to when we get to the check-out etc etc. For any subject there will be a number of occasions in your lessons where you can ask students to do some estimating. It could be the amount of time an activity is going to take them, a mark/score they believe they'll get on a test/assessment, the number of years since an event, the amount of an ingredient they will need for a recipe for a given number of people, an amount of liquid to use in an experiment, the length of wood to cut to make an object from etc etc. You could even, when asking students to estimate something related to your lesson, ask them to estimate the answer to a calculation i.e. estimate the answer to 34.98 + 23.1.

Idea #12 - Squares

I love squares. This is perhaps one of my favourite activities to do and there are so many variations of this activity that I probably need to write another blog post/book to explain them all...and even then they'll be other variations found too!

The activity 'squares' is based on a 6 by 6 dotted grid (or other square sized grid of your choosing) and players take it in turn to join two dots together, thus making 1 of the 4 sides of a square. The game continues with the other player taking their turn. Each time a square is created by having all 4 of its' sides complete the person wins that square.
How I make this more 'mathsy' is by having numbers in each 'square' prior to the start of each game, then, when a student wins a square they add that amount to their total. I've also done this when introducing algebra to get students to collect like terms (this would require letters and numbers to be placed in squares at the start).
This can be adapted for any subject by making a mega game of squares on the class whiteboard, or even better, on the IWB. Instead of writing numbers in the squares you can write questions for students to answer. So everytime they win a square they answer the question in the square they have won. The game is all about strategy and problem solving and is an enormous amount of fun!

Additionally, this can be done on a coordinate grid with a set of axes for students to call out coordinates before drawing their line (or their partners' chosen line). For example 'I want to join the points (2, 3) and (3,3). This variation could be used well in Geography when discussing maps and grid references.

Here's an extreme example of a 'squares' grid, write questions/numbers etc in the squares and each time a square is won the students answers that question or adds the number to their score!














So, that's all 12 ideas I presented (briefly) in my numeracy across the curriculum session. I hope it gives you a better idea of each and ultimately, how you can build numeracy into your lessons (if you were struggling to find a way to do so). There are loads of ways you can adapt these ideas to suit your subject/students/lesson etc I hope I've given enough examples for specific subjects? If you try anything out do let me know by commenting below or tweeting me at @mrprcollins.

Scrabble Tiles: The Best Literacy/Numeracy Activity?

I often 'favourite' a lot of tweets I see on my Twitter feed and later revisit them. A lot of the tweets I favourite are just simply pictures to inspire me, have quotes on that I can use or can be put up on display in class. When looking back through my 'favourited' tweets recently I came across one that had tweeted the following picture...

There are plenty of these 'Scrabble' tiles images you can download and print out just by going to Google and doing a quick search.








I've just printed off about 8-9 of these on a full page of A4 so I have plenty to use in class. I've cut them all up, laminated them and they're now ready to use...

Here's how they look. I'm planning on using these in the following ways as short starter activities to do in class. My aim behind these activities is to give students a chance to get their brains thinking mathematically and to also introduce a bit of literacy into my lessons.

I imagine that, for English teachers, getting numeracy into lessons is just as tricky as it is for us Mathematics teachers to get in the literacy element. So hopefully with this task it covers both bases.

Here are the ideas...

For a starter task students would each be given 7-8 of the tiles each and they'd be asked to create a word that could either be linked to the lesson objectives or not. For other subjects that are trying to build in numeracy (Geography, History, Science etc) I feel you'd have to get students to try and link them to that subject. MFL could do the same here but with words in French, German, Spanish etc. For Mathematics however, they can just attempt any word they can think of from their tiles. Now, due to the numbers of each tile available some students may not get a suitable vowel or enough of certain letters, so I'd introduce an option here to work with partners or groups to 'swap' and share tiles as needed.
The idea would then be to try and come up with the highest scoring word possible. For weaker students this can be left by using the 'Scrabble' scores for each letter i.e. for the word 'algebra' they'd get 1 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 3 + 1 + 1 = 10. However to challenge students further...

You can get students to assign values to each letter of the Alphabet according to their position in the alphabet i.e. A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, ..., Z = 26. Then, having formed a suitably correct word, the student would multiply the 'Scrabble' tiles score with the letter's position in the alphabet. i.e. for the 'Scrabble' tile G, for which you get 2 points, and is placed 7th in the alphabet, you'd get a score of 2 x 7 = 14. All letter scores would then be added together to reveal the word's total score.

For example...

Using the word 'algebra'
A = 1 and is 1st letter of the alphabet, score of 1 x 1 = 1
L = 1 and is the 12th letter of the alphabet, score of 1 x 12 = 12
G = 2 and is the 7th letter of the alphabet, score of 2 x 7 = 14
E = 1 and is the 5th letter of the alphabet, score of 1 x 5 = 5
B = 3 and is the 2nd letter of the alphabet, score of 3 x 2 = 6
R = 1 and is the 18th letter of the alphabet, score of 1 x 18 = 18
and finally, A = 1 and is 1st letter of the alphabet, score of 1 x 1 = 1. So, that would give you 1 + 12 + 14 + 5 + 6 + 18 + 1 = 57. A total word score of 57.

Along the same rules you could ask students open questions like:

What is the best tile to choose?
Which is the best vowel to choose?
Would a 5-letter word always score more than a 3-letter word? Why? Why not?

Alternatively, you could get students to, on finding a suitable word, use BIDMAS (and the 'Scrabble' tile scores) to reach a desired number. For example, using the above word 'factor' and trying to reach the target number of, say, 24, you could do:

4 x (1 + 3 + 1 + 1 + 1) = 24

Again, you could ask here:

How many possible ways are there of making [24] with your word?
Which of the numbers between [1 and 10] can/can not be achieved with your word?
What's the highest number you can achieve with your word? How can you be sure?

If anybody has any other suggestions on how these could be used then please get in touch at @mrprcollins or by commenting below...I'm now going to check my SPAG!

GCSE Revision - 'Tip of the Iceberg'

Earlier in the year, late January, I observed a 'literacy exhibition lesson' that one of our school's English ASTs put on for teachers to attend if they were free and able to do so.

As literacy across the curriculum is a key push by our school this year there have a been a number of these lessons put on by our ASTs and I this is the 1st post of the lessons I have observed and will write about.
Another pull to observe this lesson is that the class that were being taught included a few of my Y11 class, some of which I had, at the time, only recently started to teach after our sets were changed due to recent examination results. So, I had the added bonus of seeing some of my students in another lesson, which I have found extremely useful in the past - how they act/react to a different teacher/subject etc.

The lesson itself was about the class revising for their English GCSE examinations and answering a GCSE question, focusing on structuring an answer and also on analytical skills.

The lesson started with an image of an iceberg of the board. The teacher asked what they could see on the board. This lead to a discussion on the 'tip of the iceberg' and how this was the 'explicit' part of a GCSE question - what it's literally telling/asking you to do. The rest of the iceberg, and majority, was the implicit part of the GCSE question, what is being implied by the question and what is it you need to do/show that they're not actually telling you in order to answer the question.

For example if you saw a question involving an image of a triangle and the question said 'Find x' you would explicitly be asked to work out the missing value of the length of the triangle marked x. What could be implied is that you need to use Pythagoras' Theorem in order to do this.

The lesson then continued to look at some images and the teacher asked the class what was implied by the images. One of the images was of a red rose. The suggestions the class came back with were: danger, love, death, anger, fragility, pride (the English rugby team's logo), beauty etc. Lots of areas here for discussion with each that were explored as the teacher questioned why they had chosen their given suggestion. What was key to this activity is the teacher used a lot of encouraging language to entice the students; 'there are no wrong answers', 'you're not wrong', your opinion can never be wrong' were just some of the phrases that were used.
The teacher then asked how they explain what is beneath the surface and then referred the class to a flipchart which had a load of analytical vocabulary. The class would later be looking out for this vocab in a written answer to the question they would then be asked to answer themselves.

After this, the teacher showed the class an image of a burger and used it to symbolise the stages in structuring an essay answer. The bun was the 'point' they were making, the burger/filling would then be the 'quote' the students would use to back up their point and then the other bun was their 'comment' explaining their point. This was when the exam question ('how does John Agard use imagery in Flag to present attitudes to conflict') was showed on the IWB and the teacher, having given a copy out to each student, asked them to highlight the 3 parts of the example answer and then highlight any analytical language that was used within the answer. This was key to setting the class up to then write their own answer to the question, or (quite nicely) another question of their choosing from the same poem they were studying. There was a brief 'it's quiet work now' before the class then got on with writing their own answers to the question/their chosen question. After the class were given time to do this they were welcomed to read out their answers and students were asked to listen out for their analytical vocabulary.

Whilst the class were working, and throughout the lesson, I was thinking of how I can get the lesson into one of my Mathematics lessons, something that being a Mathematics teacher doesn't necessarily come naturally! I've always thought that getting literacy into a Mathematics lesson is as difficult as getting numeracy into an English lesson!

However, I related everything the teacher did to the Mathematics GCSE paper. Sometimes students fall short as they do not understand what the question is asking them to do. This is often the case where you see questions that just give an equation and say 'Solve'. That is the only information the student is given - to solve the equation. But how? How do they solve the equation, what do they need to do...this is what is implied by the question by what sort of equation they are given. This is what I wanted to look at with my Y11 class and so I thought about 'the tip of an iceberg'...

I decided that I would simply, like in the above observed lesson, start my lesson by showing the class an image that they are likely to see in a GCSE examination paper -  right-angled triangle. From this I started to think of all the things the class could be asked to do and same up with this double sided piece of A3 paper...(the possibilities are seemingly endless, but did my students know this?)

It took me a while to sit down and think of all the possible questions/topics that could involve a right-angled triangle, I was surprised by how many possibilities/variations there could be...just from a right-angled triangle!

'Front and back'!

















Having planned all the different things I could cover with the class in the lesson I started to put together a notebook file using the topics I felt the class would need to revise. Here are the initial few slides I showed the class...

This was my 'starter' slide. The amount of things the class suggested in terms of what they may be asked to do (what was implied/suggested by the image) were fantastic. It was also a way of me asking certain questions to gauge what they may have already known about certain topics

I used the 'tip of the iceberg' image the teacher used in the lesson I observed to show some continuity across the school to those students we both teach. I used this opportunity to praise those students in the lesson for their answers in the literacy lesson.

This is one of the slides I used to see if the class knew what they would be asked to do (explicitly stated in the exam question, i.e. rotate the shape 90 degrees about the point (1, 2)) Then, ask them what that implied they'd need to do? i.e. use their knowledge of coordinates and rotations - how do they rotate a shape?  etc
I then, after their suggestions as to what they may be asked to do, and then how they would do it, what they might need to use etc I revealed all the different things they could be asked to do with the image/question presented

I then gave the class some questions involving working out the perimeters/areas of triangles using Integers, decimals, fractions - these questions would test whether they would be able to multiply/add decimals and fractions - something that would be implied by the question just by the values they are given.

Finally, for the 'plenary' of the lesson, I showed the class this slide and gave them each a piece of A3 paper to fill in a 'mind map' style revision sheet based on the image I showed them right at the start of the lesson. They then would take this home and finish it off for 'homework'/their own revision.

 

I have added this, and a similar 'circles' tip of the iceberg resource to my TES resources for anybody to download (get them both, in the same resource, here) if they feel this may be something that would suit their classes. Both slides include loads of different topics/images to see what the class would glean from them.

 

I found this to be an excellent way of finding out what students might already know/not know on a given topic that was suggested from the original image shown at the start of the lesson. Then in the lesson itself, using the carefully planned activities, I was able to see if they knew lots of other facts/information by asking them to work with fractions, decimals, percentages (for higher students - surds) etc.

 

Hopefully, it also enabled my students to interpret the examination questions better too, looking for all the information in the question to help them understand what it may be that they are being asked to do - what the question is implying.

 

Let me know if you use the resource, if you make any amendments to it or have done something similar. Thanks to 'JB' for his lesson mentioned above, it provided me with the inspiration to create the resources for my own lessons, and hopefully has helped me build in literacy to my Mathematics lessons?!

www.teacherled.com

Last year I found the following IWB resource... http://www.teacherled.com/resources/quiz/quizload.html and have put this to good use a number of times in my lessons as plenary activities to assess what my students have learnt. I'll either pair up students of similar abilities and ask them a question based on the lesson or I'll split the class into teams to answer questions.

I didn't, however, realise that this is just one IWB resource on a website FULL of IWB resources!

www.teacherled.com

I've just spent the past hour or so having a look at all the different resources on their and thought of how I might incorporate them into my classroom next term. Here's my favourites and how I intend to use them...

1) Keyword Jumble - http://www.teacherled.com/resources/keywords/keywordload.html

This IWB resource allows you to randomly generate a Mathematical word for students to unscramble. Very much like an anagram type starter activity and this is exactly how I intend to use it, either by choosing the randomly generated words, or (possibly more likely) to type in key words for the lesson one by one for the students to unscramble. The best thing about this is that as you type in the word(s) the letters are protected by *s so the students can't see the original word. The site then scrambles the word for you automatically generating your very own anagrams for students to solve. This will be great for literacy across the curriculum and for getting students to define each of the key words given to them. This would make a great starter activity for teaching a new topic or even for just settling students/giving them something to do as you come in.

2) Word Circle - http://www.teacherled.com/resources/wordcirc/wordcircload.html

This is a IWB resource very similar to the puzzles you find in the newspaper where you have a circle of letters that form a 9 letter word. The idea is, in the time given (3 mins built into the resource) to find as many 4+ letter words as you can from the letters given. I can see this being great for tutor time.

3) Letter Dice - http://www.teacherled.com/resources/letterdice/letterdiceload.html

Another great activity for form time this one...Letter Dice aka 'Boggle'. The resource allows you to roll the dice and then generate a 'Boggle' type board on your IWB. Students would then find as many words as they could in the time you give them. I could see this being used mainly in tutor time or even in a Mathematics lesson as a 'settler' activity, where students earn bonus points for finding a mathematical word!?

4) Algebra Substitution - http://www.teacherled.com/resources/algebraop/algebraopload.html

This IWB resource allows the teacher to go through some examples of substitution, choosing their own values to substitute in. The students can then complete the questions and then they can be checked automatically on the IWB. Good for checking understanding of BIDMAS (in some of the questions). This would be better though if the expressions to substitute into could be changed.

5) Prime Snakes - http://www.teacherled.com/resources/snakes/primesnakeload.html

This is the main reason I've spent over an hour checking out the resources on the site...it's ridiculously addictive, and quite hard too! The idea is you navigate the snake around the board trying to 'eat' all of the prime numbers. You'll need to use the arrow keys to guide your snake around the board. I intend to give this to my set 5 year 8 classes as they'll love it next time we're in the computer room, this way they can have their own game going, rather than having to take it in turns at the IWB (which is still plausible given that there's only around 10 of them in each class).

I'm sure there's loads of over IWB resources on this site I'll find a use for too, they've got isometric paper, clocks, 100 squares etc and some of the activities on there would suit Primary level Mathematics better than secondary, but are equally as valuable to those classes in secondary school that lack the basics.

To see ALL the IWB resources on this site check out http://www.teacherled.com/all-interactive-whiteboard-resources/