Helen Kingdon Leader of Curriculum Brooke Primary School Can involvement in real life mathematics improve using and applying skills for a group of underachieving Year 5 pupils?

Context We are a significantly above average size primary school – in the largest 20% nationally. No significant difference between the number of girls and boys In line with national average for children who have free school meals. We are below the national average for pupils with Special Educational needs but a significantly above average number of pupils who have statements. We are a largely white British population with only 3% from minority ethnic backgrounds.

Background We identified that within our cohort of year five, a lot of the children were struggling to make satisfactory progress within mathematics. We discussed the reasons for this and concluded that the children needed to have real life contexts in which to apply their mathematical learning.

Constructionism Constructionist learning is inspired by the constructivist theory that individual learners construct mental models to understand the world around them, by reflecting on their personal experiences and relating their new knowledge to that which they already know. When researching into this area we found... Papert (1991), believed the way forward in the teaching of numeracy was construction and creativity. Children might want to learn if it involved creativity. This was also backed up by Sir Ken Robinson in 2006 who states children are born with creativity (the ability to take risks) but our education system educates this belief out of them.

We decided to adopt the constructionism approach. Dan Meyer video clip Maths class needs a makeover. (TED Talks)

Year 5 Teaching now includes More use of multimedia ( real world in the classroom) More encouragement of student intuition – starting point for learning (creating a more level playing field) Short questions / more open questions More opportunity for the students to build the problem Being less helpful (as a teacher – more facilitating learning) Creating a higher quality curriculum

Why did we need a healthy tuck shop? Brooke Tuck Children made logo’s and we used the good parts from a few to make the final logo. Why did we need a healthy tuck shop?

The pupils carried out research into which products would sell the best within Brooke Tuck. The Children worked out unit costs for each item using division and multiplication strategies.

Event Day

Preparing smoothies Measuring

Grand Opening Money calculation

End of year 5 After our Small Business project which gave the children in year 5 a real life context in which to apply their mathematics skills and attach it to real life situations; 2 out of 23 children made no progress by the end of year assessments in June. (8%) 11 out of the 23 made 1/3 of a level progress(48%) 5 out of the 23 made expected 2/3 level progress (22%) 5 out of the 23 made more than expected progress (22%) Which means 15 out of 23 on track or above Out of 8 children not on track 7 made progress of at least 1/3 of a level So in year 5 we decided to continue to use a more constructionism approach to our learning in Numeracy and apply it to other areas of the curriculum where possible.

Transition Week

How can you show varying emotions through colour?

Task We are going to put ourselves in the place of an 8 year old and complete the transition lesson. Hopefully this will create a better picture of the teaching methods used in year 5.

What learning took place? Language connected to proportion Measuring vocabulary , measuring accurately Communication skills Compromising with ideas Collaborating skills Leadership skills Logic

Brooke’s Best Buns More measuring

They discussed each mixture in terms of consistency and why they looked and felt the way they did.

The children predicted which mixture may taste the best.

The children tasted each bun and predicted which bun had which ratio of ingredients. Mostly they were correct.