Category Archives: 2 Prof. Knowledge & Understanding

A Time for Change!

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 My second week has been busy as well as a little worrisome. As I had to leave my placement at the Brae last week I was worried what would happen and if I would be able to progress into third year. Susan got in touch with me quickly and told me that she had found me another placement. I was relieved! She sent me the organisation details and the contact details of the CEO of the organisation. I got in contact with her and she was happy for me to come in for a meeting the next day to meet everyone and find out more about the organisation. She also sent me some information on the organisation so that evening I did some research on PAMIS as I had never heard of them.

Meeting Jenny and everyone at PAMIS on the Wednesday was great and I found out more about the organisation as well as all of the different tasks that I would be taking part in. PAMIS is an organisation that works with children and adults with profound and multiple disabilities which meant that I could still achieve my goal of working with disabled children as well as let me complete tasks that I had never had experience of before. I also found out that someone else in my course was at PAMIS.

All the different tasks and meeting done at PAMIS sounded fascinating to me as well as great for my development as a teacher. After my meeting, Jenny had asked me if I had wanted to join in a meeting that the other teaching student had. I decided that it would be best to jump into this placement straight away and decided to join the meeting even though I had no idea what the meeting was about and all I knew that it was with other students on placement. When we walked into an empty room I was a little perplexed and then I noticed that it was a video meeting. The students were in the Glasgow office!

Walking into a meeting blind was scary when I was only just learning about the organisation. Luckily, the meeting was with four occupational therapist students so it did not feel so scary. Straight away I was experiencing new things which was scary and nerve-wracking but also very interesting. A first I did not know what the meeting was fully about but I very quickly worked it out. The Great Day Out had been mentioned in my initial meeting but only briefly as Jenny was telling me all about the different projects that PAMIS has running. PAMIS are currently trying to create a website so that parents of children with profound and multiple disabilities can know which activity places that have certain facilities and activities that are suitable for disabled children and their siblings so that the siblings do not get bored doing the same thing all the time. The meeting with the occupational therapist students was to share ideas for this website that they had come up with and what we (the other student more so as I had just started but I contributed what I could) had thought of too. The organisation is hoping to plan a Great Day Out at one of the places that would be on the website so that different activities at one of these places can be organised. This website may have things like a symbol to show certain facilities at different places, for example, a gold star to show which locations have a changing place
s toilet. It was also discussed that the website should have a filter type feature so that families can filter all of the places to what they need. For example, if they need a changing places toilet and wheelchair access they can click those two features and the website will bring up all the places
that have these facilities. As well as what facilities each place has the website could also show teaching activities for each place so that schools can use the website when planning school trips. This was particularly interesting to me from a teaching point of view as its showing what can be learned from each place. For example, what activities could a disabled child and her non-disabled sister do at Blair Drummond so that it is enjoyable for them both and they both learn something.

When I had my initial meeting with Jenny she had mentioned that Max had a meeting the next day at a close town’s high school as he was putting together a Multi-Sensory Story to help with a child’s transition from primary to secondary school. Jenny thought it a good idea for us to work on this together. The next day we went to the high school to meet with the teachers the child would be in contact with the most as well as speak about what is best for the child when they visit the school for transitions visits and what signifiers she uses to signify different rooms and places as the child is registered blind. On the way to the school I had made sure that i knew who we were going to meet, about the child and about the transition. This meant that when we got to the high school I knew what was going on and could contribute to the meeting, even though I had only started at PAMIS the day before.

The meeting can be linked to the Standards for Provision Registration as meeting with an ASN teacher and a visual impairment teacher I needed to be professional and confident in what we were discussing. this meeting can be linked to several of the GTC Scotland’s’ standards for professionalism but I feel like it inks best to this one develop an understanding of the sector and schools in which they are working, including: the role of education authorities, the organisation and management of schools and resources, improvement planning, professional review and development and how these connect to teachers’ professional practice. This is important as by having this meeting and helping with this transition has also let me see what facilities there is within my local community in which I will be teaching within one day.

Logistics and Supply Chain

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Richard’s last input with us was all about logistics and supply chain. Is there any maths behind these two things? Well yes of course there is! Logistics and supply chain is the managing of planning, implementing and controlling the process of the shipment of goods. This includes how far the food had travelled to how the food is travelling.

 

Food miles

Food miles is vitally important when it comes to our food. How far has your food travelled before it gets to your plate? Food miles is the distance all of your food has travelled before it gets to your plate. That includes every single ingredient. So has your chicken came from 40 miles down the road or has it been flown over from New Zealand? Are your vegetables from your local farm or Europe? These things are all important. Food miles includes every mile that your food has travelled, from producer to the supermarket and then to the consumer. However, other factors can come into play. For example, Saunders, Barber and Sorenson (2006) did a study that compared how much energy it took to produce lamb in the UK and New Zealand. She found that New Zealand were using less energy to produce their meat then the UK. This included the energy used to get the lamb to the UK as well. But why is this important? This is important because of climate change. Climate change is a massive thing worldwide with big companies wanting to do what they can to decrease their carbon footprint. If importing lamb from New Zealand is actually better for the planet than producing it here than is what supermarkets are going to buy. This shows that food miles are not as important to supermarkets anymore as they are concentrating more on their carbon footprint.

Food miles are important to a lot of consumers though as many people like to buy locally produced food. This will be a challenge for supermarkets as they will need to work out what products are better to get from local producers and when it is best to import them. What will the consumer buy? This is the role of Demand Planners.

Teaching children about food miles is important. If a child knows where their food is coming from then that might help them with knowing the right things to eat. This emphasises the fundamental understanding of mathematics as it shows connectedness between mathematics and health and wellbeing. Profound understand of mathematics’ concept of basic ideas can also be shown when looking at food miles. Children can learn about distances – miles, kilometres, metres and centimetres using the context of where their food comes from.

 

Shipping

When shipping products many different factors have to be considered – mass, distribution of this mass (the truck or ship needs to be evenly packed), size, temperature requirements, distance travelled and time taken to travel this time (shelf life of the products), and shape and volume. All of these things need to be taken into consideration when products are moved about. Food tends to be moved in shipping containers. The creation of these shipping containers has changed international shipping. These containers can be filled with different food products. Each different container can be a different temperature so that the food inside can stay at its best as it travels. This solves the problem of food going off while in transport because of the temperature it is stored at. Shipping containers also solve the problem or shape and volume. Shipping containers are all the same size and shape which means that they fit together and can be pilled high on the back of a boat. Since they can be stacked together with no space that means that companies are not shipping air and the boats can be evenly packed to distribute the mass evenly.

Who knew that so many mathematical concepts are needed to import and export food! This relates to the PUFM basic concepts. Children need to learn about the basic idea of volume, shape, weight, size, temperature and distance. These are all basic concepts that underlie primary school mathematics. Yet, here they are in a real life setting. This, again, shows me how much math is needed in the real world. The fact that there is so many mathematical ideas in something that seems simple has left me shocked.

 

References

Saunders, C., Barber, A. and Sorenson, L.-C. (2006) Food miles, carbon Footprinting and their potential impact on trade 1 food miles, carbon Footprinting and their potential impact on trade. Available at: https://researcharchive.lincoln.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10182/4317/food_miles.pdf (Accessed: 21 November 2016).

Time for Maths

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Time is a funny thing. It is something that we all use but we have no idea where it originates from.

Why do we use the time system that we do? How before clocks were invented did we know what time it was? How do animals know what time it is?

Well let’s try and answer some of those questions.

Horology is the study of time and the measurement of time. The word ‘Horology’ originates from Greek words hṓra (hour, time). Horology also look at how time is important to humans and is this idea of time innate in animals.

When you think about it, time is enlaced though everything that we do. What time do we go to sleep; what time do you get up; how long did you sleep for, which makes a huge different to how you feel that day; the time that you eat at throughout the day. Humans are not the only ones that go through these different time routines everyday, so do animals.

For example, if you look at my dogs. My dogs in the morning and evening are very vocal about needing fed. They will come and sit staring at myself or my mum until we go and feed them. Now, does this mean that they have an innate idea of time, which is referred to as a “body clock” or do they just start to get hungry? There is no way to really know.

However, what about animals that’s routines are not influenced by humans, for example, nocturnal animals. How do they know that it is time for them to come out? it is said that they “just know” when to sleep and when to eat but that “just knowing” would be their innate idea of time. Another example of animals understanding the concept of time is hibernation. How do hibernating animals know when it is time to stock up for food and find a suitable spot to hibernate in?

A suitable example for this time of year is migrating birds. If you look up in the sky in the mornings and evenings the sky will be full of geese migrating for the winter. In the spring, the sky will again be full at these times of day as the geese migrate back to Scotland. But how do these birds know when it is time to migrate? Is it that it simply gets too cold for the animals hence why migration and hibernation happens? Or is it that the concept of time is imbedded into these animals’ natural instinct which tells them when it is time or change their behaviour to suit their surrounding or move elsewhere. I use the migrating geese over Scotland as my own way to tell time. When I see them migrating south I know that it is getting colder and that winter is coming and when I see then migrating north I know that spring is near. This means that I use an animals innate time telling to clue me in on what time of year it is.

animals-marmaduke-dogs-canines-behavior-pets-ban111219_low

We tell time using the traditional mechanical clock. However, this is not what has always been used to tell the time. Sundials and obelisks are the oldest known device for measuring time. Sundials worked by tracking the sun as it moved from east to west. As the sun moved it created shadows which then predicted what time of day it was. A pillar or stick called a gnomon was put in the middle of the sundial and time was then calculated depending on the length of the shadow (Marie,2016).

This is the shadow of the sun revealing the time on a sundial.

sundial-cornwall_small

The Egyptians created an obelisk. There were similar to a sundial but they divided up the days into parts. This was the first time days had ben formally divided up. These worked the same as sundials but the enabled citizens to partition their day into two parts by noon. Obelisks also showed when the longest and shortest days of the year were (Bellis, 2016)
obelisk

Looking at time has given me even more idea of how math is used in the real world that I do not even realise. Hence this has given me a better understanding of what it means to have a “profound understanding of mathematics”.

References

Wikipedia (2016) ‘Horology’, in Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horology (Accessed: 21 November 2016).

Bellis, M. (2016) The history of sun clocks, water clocks and Obelisks sun clocks, water clocks and Obelisks. Available at: http://inventors.about.com/od/famousinventions/fl/The-History-of-Sun-Clocks-Water-Clocks-and-Obelisks.htm (Accessed: 21 November 2016).

Marie, N. (2016) When time began: The history and science of sundials. Available at: https://www.timecenter.com/articles/when-time-began-the-history-and-science-of-sundials/ (Accessed: 21 November 2016).

Math is linked to Music!?! What!!

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Every input in this module I realise how much math is laced through nearly everything we do. I did not realise how much math interlinked with so many other curricular areas.

“The astronomer Galileo Galilei observed in 1623 that the entire universe ‘is written in the language of mathematics’, and indeed it is remarkable the extent to which science and society are governed by mathematical ideas” (Rosenthal, 2005). This shows how mathematics has been known to run through several different areas for hundreds of years.

 

Music has always been hugely important to be. I have always sung or been sung too. When you are learning to read music and play an instrument math is not something that you think you are doing anything with. But in fact you are! Apart from the obvious mathematic part of music like how long notes are held for; how many beats are in a bar or how to pitch a piece of music or a song. There are many ways in which maths runs through music in ways you would never realise.

Patterns are an important and huge part of maths as I have already spoken about (see Maths is Pretty!). They are a huge area in which math can be used in the real world. However, math and music can also be linked through patterns. Many different musical pieces are made up of different patterns of notes. These do not tend to be called patterns though as musicians tend to call them motifs, melodies or sometimes rhythmic patterns. Pieces of music consist of these patterns.

Maths also comes into music when you look at octaves. An octave consists of eight notes. Notes are an octave apart when they are the same named note but played in a different frequency. A note played an octave higher is played at double the frequency while a note played an octave lower is half the frequency than the middle note. For example, High C and Middle C are an octave apart but when played together they sound great. This is the same for all notes. Several famous songs play notes together that are an octave apart – the initial “I’m singing” of “Singing in the Rain”; the first two notes of “Somewhere over the rainbow”; and the first two notes of the third line of “Happy Birthday”. (Rosenthal, 2005) This is a perfect example of how these pairs of notes go together.

The Pentatonic scale is made up of five notes. If you are playing a piano these five notes are your black keys. Every piece of music will have these five notes in it somewhere. It is suggested that we are genetically programmed with these five notes just as we are language (Goodall, 2008). These five notes are innate within us. Several famous songs use the pentatonic scale including, “Mull of Kintyre”, “Auld Lang Syne”, “Swing Low” and lots of rock songs use the pentatonic scale in their guitar riffs including “Whole Lotta Love” by Led Zeppella. If you are using the oentatonic scale to write a song you are not just stuck with these five notes but they can be used to develop from.

Bobby McFerrin demonstrates how this scale is genetically within humans.

He does not tell the audience what is the next note to play but they are able to sing the next note in the scale.

The Pentatonic scale is the perfect notes to give children as they will always sound good together no matter what order they are played in. Is that how these five notes become programmed into us? By music teachers who want children to create a nice sounding piece of music, who knows! 

Fibonacci Sequence

The Fibonacci sequence (mentioned in a previous post, Maths and Art) can be seen throughout musical sequences as well. Including all notes in an octave there are thirteen. In a scale there are eight notes, the fifth and the third notes make up the basic foundation for the chords. On a piano keyboard scale there are thirteen keys, eight white and five black, these notes are then split into groups of two and three. All of these numbers are from the Fibonacci sequence.

The Golden Ratio and Phi can be seen in music instruments as well. Violins are designed using the golden ratio.

violin-phi

 

References

K. (2012) Bobby McFerrin demonstrates the power of the Pentatonic scale. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Irii5pt2qE (Accessed: 13 November 2016).

Rosenthal, J. (2005) The magical mathematics of music. Available at: https://plus.maths.org/content/magical-mathematics-music (Accessed: 13 November 2016).

ScoobyTrue (2008) Howard Goodall on Pentatonic music. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpvfSOP2slk (Accessed: 13 November 2016).

(No Date) Available at: http://www.goldennumber.net/music/ (Accessed: 13 November 2016).

Emergent Reading in Real Life!

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I witnessed some fantastic emergent reading this weekend. I bought a book for my three-year-old little sister. She sat down with the book straight away and started “reading” the book. She began to say sentences and “read” describing the pictures that were on the pages of the book that she had been given. Obviously, since my sister has just turned three in the last few months she cannot read. However, she showed how she would read if she could. She was holding the book correctly and following the words with her finger as if she was reading it.

When I sat down with her to read it she was desperate to tell me what the words said and how that was different to what I was saying. This was my first time seeing the signs of emergent reading developing in a child. It was incredibly interesting to me and it It showed me what I had to look for when I am working in the early years in children.

Why would you want to discover maths?!

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When we were asked to choose an elective for MA2, it was not a hard choice. The minute there was a module that mentioned mathematics I knew that was the one I wanted to do. To me, mathematics is the subject that makes the most sense. The fact that I enjoyed mathematics in school was always something that my family and friends did not understand. The minute that math is mentioned as something that you love mathematics, people give you strange looks and ask you ‘Why?’. Many people struggled to understand why I would enjoy a subject that is all about numbers and equations. They struggled to see why I would choose to understand the language of numbers rather than the language we are all use to in standard English reading books. Well, why would I not choose the world of numbers? If you cannot understand the numbers around you then you will not be able to understand the world.

One common dislike of mathematics is that there is only ever one answer. That is always my answer to why I love mathematics so much. I have always loved that if you follow through an equation correctly then you will get the correct answer. Compared to English texts which could be interpreted in any way depending on the person and how you understood the text. However, this is not always the case. Some areas of mathematics are not as structured as always having one answer. In fact, some areas of mathematics might not even be about getting a correct answer but about what you can create using mathematics.

The way our curriculum is structured why would anyone see the fun and adventure in numbers. When mathematics is mentioned, the general response tends to be ‘why do you like it?’ or ‘when are you going to use it in day-to-day life?’.  Most mathematics that you learn in secondary school may never be used unless you go into a certain career. However, mathematics is used very differently in normal day-to-day life.  How can we get children to enjoy mathematics and see the fun in it if they only think of mathematics as times tables or algebra? Children need to be shown the fun in mathematics. They need to be shown how mathematics is weaved throughout several of their other subjects. Maybe if children were shown how people in history discovered how to work out the area of a shape or how symmetry is used in architectural they might be more interested in learning mathematics (Sautoy). If the curriculum brought in a context to mathematics rather than children learning an equation, how to use it but they think they will never use it again. Having more of an understanding of the background to math would help engage children in mathematics a lot more than simply sitting learning from a textbook.

Professor Marcus du Sautoy described mathematics as a language that you needed to work on to understand just like Shakespeare. I think this comparison describes mathematics and what you need to do to understand it perfectly. At school, I always struggled to understand Shakespeare but several people struggle to understand the language of mathematics. If the children that struggle with math are sat down and helped to understand the language of numbers, just as those who do not understand an English book or Shakespeare are treated then I think we would have a lot more people in the world who would see mathematics as a good thing and not something not worth learning.

 

References 

du Sautoy, M. (2009) The secret life of numbers. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2009/jun/23/maths-marcus-du-sautoy (Accessed: 14 October 2016).

Enquiring Practitioner

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Practitioner Enquiry is defined as a professional whom is constantly doing research to better their understanding and knowledge of their profession. The research is based on your practice and it is beneficial to reflect on the research you have done previously to better you as a teacher. It can be done by the professional on their own or in a group. If it is a group then they collaboratively share a common research question that can be investigated in different ways.

Practitioner enquiry should be an aspect of a normal day-today life of a teacher and should be done consistently throughout a teacher’s career. This supports the growth of a teacher within their career and helps to create different ways of working. You do not just train to be a teacher and then you are qualified, your learning continues, being a teacher is a continuing journey. Being an enquiring practitioner is about moving beyond your usual way of teaching and discovering other ways to teach and help the children learn.

The most successful education systems invest in developing their teachers and helping them reflect and enquire on their practice. Benefits of practitioner enquiry can include encouraging teachers to challenge and transform education; provide a way for teachers to reflect and develop from their own teaching and to discover new strategies for teaching. Practitioner enquiry also supports teachers and helps them gain a better understanding and show how the concept of teachers is constantly changing.

 

Professionalism

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U58EFAwnKpw

What makes a teacher who makes a difference?

I think a teacher that makes a difference is someone who will go above and beyond for their pupils. The teachers in this video are teachers that make a difference as they take it upon themselves to better their teaching styles so that they are the best teachers that they can be. They do this all in their own time as well as hold groups so that they can discuss  different teaching styles. This means that everyone receives the best education that they could because of these amazing teachers. If these teachers had not taken this time, then their pupils would not be getting the best education they could which could harm what they go on to do in the future.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ychgs3rrdA&feature=related

Do you agree with what these teachers call professionalism?

I agree with every point that these teachers make about professionalism. Professionalism is the way you talk and your attitude towards the pupils. It is also about how the pupils see you and how approachable they find you. Pupils should find their teacher to be someone they can go to with they have any problems as well as someone they can look up to. There are also different levels of professionalism. You do not use the same level of professionalism with the pupils as you would with the parents. Communication is also extremely important skill for teachers to have which is mentioned in this video.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDf2oLt96O8&feature=related

What is the message here?

The message in this video is who values teachers as professionals? There are two very different talkers in this video.

The first is Chris Christie and he talk about how teachers should be highly valued and should be carried up high within society. He also talks about how teachers should be given what they deserve in pay as they carry our children through the educational system.

The second talker in this video is Karen Lewis. She talks about teachers being “education workers”. I think this view is a very negative view towards teachers and she makes teaching look like it is not that important a career. I think this is funny as Karen is a teacher herself so this shows how she has a negative view of her own profession

Overall, this video shows how different people look upon teaching as a profession. It shows how Chris who is obviously not a teacher thinks teachers should be valued highly within society, and Karen who is a teacher but sees her profession in a negative light and she does not think she is a professional.

Important Qualities of a Teacher.

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When looking at professionalism I feel like compassion is an important characteristic for teachers to have. Compassion is helping someone that is struggling or suffering. This is important for a teacher as they need to constantly be helping children who may be suffering. Teachers may also need to be compassionate towards parents or guardians if anything is going on out with the school environment.

Patience is another hugely important quality that teachers need. When working with children, patience is something that you need as children may not pick up ides and concept that you are teaching as quick as adults would. Children can get something wrong several times over, make a mess when doing art projects or playing. Teachers need patience to just keep calm in these situations and not get angry with the children but teach them what they need to do.

Another quality that I find important in teaching is fairness. Children come from all different backgrounds and have different skill levels. A teacher needs to be a fair person and treat all children the same. A good teacher cannot treat children differently because of where they come from or how clever they are. A lot of the time teachers can be seen as not being fair but this isn’t the case. All children learn differently so sometimes you have to teach children differently to combat this but at the same time you are still teaching children fairly. Fairness when disciplining children is also important as teachers cannot be seen as favoring one child over another.

In my opinion, tolerance is another important characteristic that teachers need. Teachers need to be able to tolerate a lot from all angles. Teachers may need to tolerate abuse from parents or guardians on the way they are teaching or how they may think you are doing something wrong. A teacher needs to be professional in these situations and tolerate what the parent say. It does not mean the teacher needs to do what the parent is telling them but they need to be able to tolerate the criticism but be confident in your teaching style.

 Lastly, honesty is an important quality for teachers to have. An honest teacher is a great teacher. Children do not benefit from a teacher that lies about what they are good at. A teacher needs to be honest about what their pupils are good and bad at. If a teacher was not honest then children would not know what they need to work on and what they are good at. On the other hand, teachers also need to be careful with honesty and make sure that they are not brutally honest and that they do not offend anyone.

Social Media In Schools.

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If I’m being honest, the power of social media scares me. Especially when you see how much children know and do on websites.
Do not get me wrong, the power that social media has is also fantastic. It means that pupils can connect and learn through several different web sites.
I keep going back and forth with whether I want to have two separate social media accounts for the personal me and the professional me or whether I will just monitor my one account. At the moment, I think that it would be more work if you had two different social media accounts. However, having one social media account for personal and professional purposes has its challenges.
I think the best way to marry the professional and the personal you on social media is to consistently monitor your privacy settings and make sure that you do not post anything that can get you into trouble at a later date. I am quite private with my social media accounts already and have my Twitter and Facebook page very private and I have to accept people that ask to follow me or see my page. I think my Facebook will always be for my friends and family only where I will be very careful with anything I post on that page and have it so that pupils cannot find me. Twitter is a little different. I don’t use Twitter a lot but I feel like it can be good for following educational hashtags that you might want your pupils to see. I think having a school Twitter page is a great idea as the pupils can then all follow it and post things onto it, as well as the teachers. If the teachers have a page with a different name that cannot be traced to them then the pupils would never know who is posting what.
Social media can be seen in positive and negative lights. I feel like using it within the classroom and engaging with pupils on it for educational purposes is an excellent use of the sites. However, I think that we also need to make sure that we are educating our pupils on the dangers of social media without making them scared to use