Category Archives: 3.1 Teaching & Learning

IncludED In The Main?!

Leave a reply

Tomorrow I am going to a meeting at the Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh. There will be three different speakers at this meeting and one of them will be ENABLE Scotland talking about their IncludED In The Main?! Campaign. I have just read the report from this and some of the facts and figures that they have discovered are really surprising to me.

ENABLE have looked at the bullying of disabled children in mainstream schools and how these people feel now that they are out of school. ENABLE have said that placing disabled children into mainstream school is not always the best for the child as it can equate to bullying. They have published a report that has twenty-two steps for the journey to inclusion. These steps include recommendations that suggest it may not always be best for disabled children to attend mainstream schools. They have several reasons (which they call their steps) for this. One of the most important (in my opinion) recommendations that they have is to embed lessons on learning difficulties into the curriculum. Many disabled children feel lonely at school with 62.5% saying that other people do not understand them. ENABLE have developed resources for teaching these lessons and they will be available in schools this year. Teachers will be also be getting training to help deliver these lessons. Hopefully, once these resources are introduced into schools they will help children to understand different learning disabilities and help to reduce disabled children’s feelings of loneliness and being misunderstood.

Another of the recommendations that ENABLE have in this report is that teacher training does not adequately prepare teachers to teach children with different learning disabilities. However, they also go on to say that teacher training cannot prepare teachers to be able to teach every child’s disability for each different learning disabilities as every child is different. This means that there needs to be continued professional development throughout a teacher’s career where they can receive training to different disabilities as well as have specific staff to help the child. ENABLE found that 30% of education professionals felt that there were not enough specific CPD for teaching young people who have learning difficulties. ENABLE also think the Named Person will help to support families of the children and the children with learning difficulties. The Named Person will make sure that families have the correct information, support and access to the right help. To develop this point further, another of ENABLE’s recommendations is for the Scottish Government to commission training courses on several areas including learning disabilities and Positive Behaviour Support. The main issue for providing this support is also not enough additional support staff and classroom assistants. Nearly 71% of educational workforce felt that there was a shortage in support assistants and that more were needed. I think if there were more support assistants then teachers and schools would be able to support all children with learning disabilities.

These are just a few of the twenty-two recommendations that ENABLE have said are the steps to inclusion for children with learning disabilities. I think that these recommendations show what needs to be done to help children with learning disabilities to feel like they are no difference to any other child. I am looking forward to discovering what is said on this topic at the meeting tomorrow.

References

ENABLE Scotland, (2016). IncludED In The Main?!. [online] North Lanarkshire: ENABLE Scotland. Available at: http://www.enable.org.uk/includedinthemain/Documents/IncludED%20in%20the%20Main%20-%2022%20Steps%20on%20the%20Journey%20to%20Inclusion.pdf [Accessed 27 Mar. 2017].

 

Logistics and Supply Chain

Leave a reply

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).

Math is linked to Music!?! What!!

Leave a reply

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).

Math is Pretty!!

Leave a reply

Even though I have always loved math I did not realise how pretty maths could be. Symmetry is what we use to make this ‘pretty maths’. This symmetry is the most significant area of math the makes a connection between science, art and maths. Symmetrical patterns can be used in several different areas. Artists use symmetry to create patterns and use maths to help create these patterns. By using simple fractions and a computer software symmetry can be used to create amazing intricate patterns that artists put on anything from canvases to items of day-to-day use.

Islamic tiling is a unique way the symmetry is used to create fascinating patterns and designs. Islamic art is created by using extravagant geometric decoration expressed by using texture, pattern. colour and calligraphy. These patterns are not just used for a decorative purpose they are used to represent a spiritual version of the world – “Unity of God”. These Islamic tilings are always created of three simple shapes – the square, the hexagon and the equilateral triangle.

15565322-mod-le-traditionnel-maroc-banque-dimages This is an example of Islamic Tiling,

This kind of pattern is called tessellation and is a great way to show children how math can be fun. Using Islamic Tiling, pattern and symmetry can be taught through a series of lessons starting with showing the children examples of Islamic tiling, showing them how they can be created on the computer and the history and meaning behind these works of art. After the children have learned about the history they can move on to create their own designs. This is showing the children how math and art are linked and how math is not always about numbers.  This lets the class have fun with this new area of math and lets them try and use simple shapes to create intricate designs. Tessellation can also be shown to children through looking at buildings and all over the world. Tasks can be set as homework for the children to find tessellation around their city. A programme could also be downloaded on the computer and this can be used with real life pictures to create patterns

The concepts in this post relates to Liping Ma’s principle of connectedness as whilst the children are learning how to make symmetrical patterns and how to use simple shapes in these patterns, they are also learning how to fit these patterns together in tessellation. This means that the children are learning more than one area of knowledge and not just the topic of tessellations. This allows children to see how all of their learning is connected.

References

Liping (2010) Knowing and teaching elementary mathematics: Teachers’ understanding of fundamental mathematics in china and the United States. 2nd edn. New York: Taylor & Francis.

Emergent Reading in Real Life!

Leave a reply

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.

Professionalism

Leave a reply

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.

How does gender affect childhood?

Leave a reply

I do not remember gender affecting me as a child. I was and still am quite a girly girl and had lots of dolls and Barbie’s. However, I would not say that I was pushed towards certain gender areas with toys or clothing. I played football and other sports with the boys in my neighbourhood and I had a little cabin in the garden that my dad built for me.
My primary school did not have anything that the boys did, but that girls didn’t. We all played sports together in P.E. and had mixed teams for sports day. I thought this was normal but when speaking about this topic with my peers and friends I discovered that every school was different. I was extremely surprised to discover that different primary schools, even ones in the same city as me, were separated for P.E. and sports day. In these sports days they would have ‘boy’s races’ and ‘girl’s races’. I also found out that not only were they separated by gender but they were also separated by age for these races. At my primary school we had mixed sex teams with a couple of people from each primary year.
The difference between all of these primary schools has really surprised me and shown me that whilst I maybe did not have a gender divide at all in my childhood, quite a lot of people did.