From: John Bibby Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2006 15:48 To: ATM mailing list Subject: I'm amazed not to have been flooded with comments about Maths Coursework ***************************************************** This is the email discussion list for members of ATM. ***************************************************** I'm amazed not to have been flooded with comments about Maths Coursework and am planning letter(s) to those in power along the following lines: =============== Dear XXXX I am concerned about the recent announcement on Maths coursework - concerned both about its substance and also the way it was announced, which seemed very abrupt and without consultation. Can you shed any light on the thinking that went behind this decision, please? Also, is it unchangeable? ======== Should we be doing something more forceful and more organised? (Please forward this or similar emails to those who may be interested) John Bibby ========================================================================================= From: Corinne Angier Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2006 17:50 To: ATM mailing list Subject: I'm amazed not to have been flooded with comments about Maths Coursework ***************************************************** This is the email discussion list for members of ATM. ***************************************************** I think it has been on the cards for a while. In many ways it may be a good thing... It has become something of a farce that students can access full solutions to many tasks on the internet (not to mention tutors family and friends!). Teachers are put in a very difficult position trying to work out how much to "support" their students given that exam results such high stakes for many schools and even individual teachers. There is a temptation to "teach" the coursework as a class lesson - I am sure there are many moderators who have received astonishingly similar batches of scripts. Most importantly though the tight mark schemes, which are intended to ensure fairness, have resulted in many teachers curtailing their students' mathematical ramblings in an effort to ensure they do what is necessary to get the marks. I hate that period in the spring term where we are dragging students into quiet corners and making them complete coursework. They have no interest in the task and it is like maths at gunpoint. Let's reclaim all those lovely extended tasks and let students work on them together, discuss and present their ideas and enjoy them outside any miserable assessment structure. Corinne Angier ============================================================================================ From: Geoff Faux Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2006 21:09 To: ATM mailing list Subject: I'm amazed not to have been flooded with comments about Maths Coursework ***************************************************** This is the email discussion list for members of ATM. ***************************************************** Thanks Corinne. I too hate an assessment led curriculum. What you reminded me of is the way we are beaten over the head with how good the Hungarians (or the Japanese ) are and what crap we are. Nobody looks at the quite different assessment constraints that these other countries work under. In Hungary I was somewhat surprised to discover that there is a book of matriculation questions with numbers that go up into the 4000s. They are grouped under a number of headings: equations with absolute value expressions, equations containing expressions with radicals, trigonometry, vectors, exercises on co-ordinate geometry etc. On the morning of the exam it is announced which 8 questions the candidates will be expected to submit written answers to. Many of the questions meet Trevor Fletcher's criteria that they are worth an hours work in a maths class and obviously there will, on occasions, be one which students have worked the previous week with their teacher. BUT, and this is where the assessment is different, within the two weeks following the written work, each student has an oral examination where they have to go through, justify, explain, extend what they have written. Of course the good students work on their ideas after the written paper, but so do the oral examiners who ask these good students reasonable extension questions. The marks come following this oral. It does give me some hint why more Hungarians have good feelings about their maths education than perhaps we achieve. If you have no great industry making up new questions (though supplements to the list do get published) no great marking and moderating of scripts you can afford the oral work and the moderation of the oral exam. Just think of the Daily Mail leader if we went this route!! If anyone is interested I might post one or two of these Hungarian questions (in English) Geoff Faux ============================================================================================ From: Geoff Faux Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2006 12:02 To: ATM mailing list Subject: I'm amazed not to have been flooded with comments about Maths Coursework ***************************************************** This is the email discussion list for members of ATM. ***************************************************** Here are 3 geometry ones. Cabri rules OK. Perhaps as an exploration but when it says in 1714 prove it means prove... 1699 What is the angle between the bisectors of two interior angles of a triangle if the third angle is 85š 1692 Prove that if the sum of the lengths of two two adjacent sides of a trapezium is equal to the sum of the lengths of the other two sides of the same trapezium the trapezium is a parallelogram. 1714 The side AC of the triangle ABC is twice the length of the line segment connecting the mid points of the sides AC and BC. Prove that the bisector of the angle at A bisects the side opposite the vertex. I might post a variety when I have another moment Geoff Faux ======================================================================================= From: John Bibby Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2006 12:07 To: ATM mailing list Subject: I'm amazed not to have been flooded with comments about Maths Coursework ***************************************************** This is the email discussion list for members of ATM. ***************************************************** OK: and let me put in tuppenceworth about the advantage of coursework AS A PARENT. Normally I find I know next to nothing about what goes on at school - my kids do the work expected of them in school-time, textbooks are rarely bought home, and discussions at school never get to the level of content. But extended coursework is an exception to this - we always know when it is going on; there's a sign of enthusiasm about the place (and of frustration when Dad insists on answering a question by still more questions - is this 'helping'?) The best coursework seems to be the type where each student's task is a special case of what a more general meta-task (an all-too-frequent example is the task related to numbers on a T-shape when placed on a calendar: e.g. Express the sum of the numbers covered by the 'T' as a function of the number at the intersection of the T.) The meta-task may then be an optional extension: Generalise to any shape of T. This task involves skills, pattern-fitting, proof, and generalisation: Is there a website that can do it? I doubt it. The decision to remove coursework completely from maths (but not from other subjects) is based upon the black-and-white idea that maths is an outcome, nto a process - and moreover, that the outcome is always right or wrong. But maths is a rainbow - not black and white. Rather than succumbing to popular prejudices, maths teachers should take the moral high ground, and assert and demonstrate that coursework can be effective as assessment as well as process. John Bibby ========================================================================================