Fizzy Maths
Through the academic year Caterham School hosted mathematicians from our East Surrey Learning Partnership primary schools: Audley, St John’s and Furzefield. The ‘Fizzy Maths’ sessions were aimed at pupils with high attainment, developing their smart thinking skills and characteristics such as confidence, perseverance and resilience (and having fun). An Audley pupil told us – 'I learnt how to do maths using creativity – and a St John’s pupil – the main thing I have learnt is that it’s okay to get things wrong'.
Caterham Maths department had designed resource packs for the pupils to work on in advance of the session, which is all part of an ongoing program of maths collaboration within the ESLP. The programme has been supported by Caterham Sixth Form - Maths Anbassadors.
Aims
The programme is aimed at high attainers in maths - aiming to develop their higher order thinking skills and their confidence towards 'working smart' and problem solving.
Background
The scheme evolved from a series of lessons that was developed before COVID. These morphed into resource packs of physical resources for participants during lockdown. This year we combined the efficiency of the packs with the irreplaceable quality of physical maths sessions with three schools attending. The desire to provide sessions for this profile of pupil came from discussions between teachers within the ESLP and specific inspection targets.
Resources
Primary schools identified the pupils who would benefit from the scheme, supported the completion of the resource packs and provided teacher and TA support for the sessions.
Caterham has ben able to provide teacher and admin input - designing the sessions - and transport for the partcipating pupils.
Impact
During the academic year 2021/22 - 28 pupils were involved in the programme, from three ESLP Primary Schools.
Attitudinal assessment has been carried out on the impact in terms of 'growth mind-set', 'openness' and 'motivation' with control groups in the participating primary schools. Participating students showed an increase in the three metrics measured by ImpactEd - Growth Mindset, openness and motivation. The increase in Growth Mindset was particularly significant at 5.2% and students showed a 5% increase in academic attainment.
St John's Pupil 1 - 'I am really glad I joined these lessons because it has made me way more confident in my answers and not afraid to fail. It has made me socialise and enjoy maths'.
St John's Pupil 2 - 'I enjoyed that it challenged me because I found it quite hard. I should be longer, it was fun.'
Furzefield Teacher - 'The children enjoyed the sessions and they seemed to begin to view maths in a different way. At the beginning, it was all about the correct answer. After the first session, they started to see that it was not necessarily so but, trial and error and finding out the best way to calculate.'
I believe that each of the children who attended have grown in confidence with their own ability in Maths.
Pupil Involvement
During the autumn term the sessions were for year 6, and switched to Year 5 in the Spring. In the summer we added some exceptional mathematicians from years 3 and 4 including pupils form Chipstead Valley Primary.
