Back to Maths Lessons for your Teacher!

As you all will know, this week is a little bit jam packed as I have taken the Tuesday off to go to a teacher conference and attend some maths workshops. I had a great time. Just look where the course was being held. The white building next to the London Eye. The second photograph is from the classroom itself. You will recognise the building if you were on the River Thames walks.

I met lots of other teachers who are just as interested in real life maths as I am. I am now thinking about how Orchard Training can met the criteria as a Centre of Excellence in maths.

One of the ways to do this is to get input from the learners and the parents. Listening to your ideas and then planning the lessons from what you want. Basically, that already happening but I need to formally show the asking so be prepared for the questionnaire.

The thing I want most is for all of you: is to feel confident in doing maths. I have my own challenges with the dyslexia but I am not going to give up doing maths. You all have seen the mistakes I have made but that I still love maths, I love the change of the puzzle, solving it and getting it right - even when I misread the question, even if I can't say the word 'integers' properly, even if I can't spell some of the maths terms without looking, even when I transpose (muddle up) the digits when recording the answer or don't calculate correctly and I get it wrong. I shrug and go on to the next question. I don't care if I get it wrong! I don't have the internal pressure, the little voice inside my head telling me "I must get this right the very first time I do this" and I will not allow the external pressures of people watching me while I get it wrong stop me doing maths. In a way, I am modelling to you how not to listening to that internal voice. That is confidence in maths - that is what I want for you. Not to be frightened or intimidated by maths.

What do you want from maths for yourselves?

If your a parent reading this - what do you want out of the maths lessons to your child?

Would any parents like maths lessons? One of the amazing things I learnt yesterday was about loan sharks, fraud and ID theft and how to stay away from them, along with: how to borrow successful. How to open bank accounts with poor credit, how to compare tariffs etc. (yep all of that is now included in real everyday maths - amazing!)

Could we have a coffee morning, maybe one day, and support each other as part of 'parent' maths.

Do let me know!