Bowland Maths materials
It seems strange now but there was a time, in the mid-eighties, when producing a worksheet on my BBC computer seemed like a reasonable investment of my time and effort. My lucky pupils in those long off days benefited from my enthusiasm for ICT with individually crafted resources tailored to their mathematical needs. Perhaps it’s just me, but nowadays I operate rather like a deep sea Arctic fisherman: constantly trawling for the great resources catch that means I can return to the educational harbour. Frankly, I’m usually too busy and overworked to create bespoke resources completely from scratch. Most of us know the feeling of occasionally getting lucky and finding the ‘ideal’ textbook, worksheet, website or software - although most of the time though I suspect we throw what we catch back into the sea as not quite what we’re looking for. However, when I did find a resource that was well produced and unusual I was careful to protect it - my dog-eared Shell Centre ‘red box’ has been a reliable lesson resource and companion for over twenty years.
When I first became aware of the resources being produced by the Bowland Trust my rather cynical reaction was that this would probably be yet another disappointing set of ‘ones that got away’. However it soon became clear as my Y8 pupils started on our ‘Road Accident’ project that this was something new and exciting on the maths landscape. Our five lesson sequence of activities looking at improving road safety for a small town engaged their interest and attention from the start.
It is no coincidence that the timing of the release of the project materials is in line with changes at national level. Many colleagues will be aware of the reviewed KS3 curriculum and the expectation for us as maths teachers to rediscover, for the benefit of our pupils, the spirit of discovery and enjoyment in our lessons. Flexibility and opportunity are at the heart of QCA’s secondary curriculum review - flexibility in teaching subjects, and opportunities for young people to gain the knowledge and skills to succeed in learning and life. The Bowland Trust materials hit these targets right at the centre with their emphasis on analysis, interpretation and communication. The project’s professionally produced 23 case studies provide a rich seam of engaging and accessible materials. For any department wishing to reflect the spirit of the new KS3 curriculum the resources will provide a great starting point. More importantly though, here are materials which may help you rediscover why you wanted to teach maths in the first place. For many maths teachers coursework became a much maligned chore but here are ideas and resources that embody what coursework was intended to do - allow pupils to show how their maths skills help make sense of the world around them.
In addition to the new KS3 curriculum colleagues will soon have to deal with the arrival of functional skills. There will be an expectation that delivery of these functional skills will be within the context of a problem solving approach and develop naturally from situations that are realistic and relevant to our pupils. Here again the Bowland materials will greatly assist maths teachers preparing pupils for functional competency at Level 1 or Level 2.
Naturally for many colleagues and students, the classroom freedoms the project materials present may initially be awkward and uncomfortable. Here the accompanying professional development resources are designed to assist colleagues - ideally working with other colleagues.
Dan Curran Mathematics teacher at Norton College in North Yorkshire
Last year I was fortunate enough to be able to trial two sets of lessons from The Bowland project with my middle ability Y9 class. Even though I had to run the activities in a shortened format, they still proved to be very worthwhile.
The first activity was ‘How Risky is Life’ This clearly met the Bowland criteria that the students shouldn’t necessarily see the work as mathematical to start with. One student actually asked “Why are we doing a PSE lesson”? The activity was very well received and the students asked if they could have similar lessons in future. The activity really made me think as it involved finding probabilities by looking at orders of magnitude to help assess real life risks. This way of rounding is different to the usual methods we employ and provided an interesting contrast to nearest ten or significant figures for example.
The comparisons that followed were made by comparing one hundredth to a thousandth to one millionth for example, which are again different to the usual comparisons of four fifths to seven ninths and so on that usually appear in probability problems. The lessons contained good examples of mathematics being used in context and are prime examples of citizenship in mathematics.
The second set of lessons was from ‘Reducing Road Accidents’, where students have to choose new accident control measures after finding suitable data from police accident records. This produced some meaningful paired and group work. The students were very keen on the interactive map/database in particular and they made good use of this in whole class discussion to test hypotheses about what was causing traffic accidents.
The experience of different groups tackling the same problem but with different aims gave the students an insight into how the real world works. I think that the mathematics in these lessons was quite clear to the students and they enjoyed having to work on a more involved task.
We looked at comments from pupils in the trial schools who did these two case studies. There is a resounding similarity in what they have to say. What pupils liked most about the case studies is using computers and working in pairs or groups. Several of them contrasted this way of working with their normal lessons:
“It was more exciting than our normal lessons in the way that we got to work as groups and work on laptops.”
“My favourite maths lesson was most of them, because it wasn’t just writing in our books.”
“Computers were good because it was a change and I enjoyed it. It’s better than writing.”
Some pupils doing the Road Accidents case study said that being creative was their favourite part of these maths lessons. And another recognised that they were being more responsibility than usual and that the context was real: “It was like we were adults.”
Many pupils referred to their own learning and to mathematical content: “I learned a bit more than normal.”
The mathematical assessment of risk in ‘How Risky is Life’ was enjoyed by the pupils and for some their favourite part was using graphs: “One good part of this case study is to see that life isn’t as risky as you think.”
There was more reaction among trial pupils to the mathematical content in the second case study, both positive and negative. Several pupils enjoyed the budgeting part of the work: “It was good because we added things up and had £100,000 to spend on safety stuff.”
This was the least favourite part for one pupil: “Adding the prices and doing the work, because it was a bit hard.”
My experiences reinforced my belief that you have to keep trying new things and there is no time like the present. I certainly feel more encouraged to try more activities from the Bowland Project when they become available.
Robert Wix
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