Kathryn Clark

Arithmaticks Discussions about maths education and pedagogy.

There’s a few blogs on my blog at Arithmaticks.com from some previous mathsconfs and the most recent one I am yet to share - but I am planning to this week 🤞
I’ll pop you my email in DM, and I can share a few other things if you’d like too 🥰

Yeah same, and exam wizard. I just feel like I’m looking in the wrong places, particularly for intersecting lines specifically.
Loads of “exam style” like what I am thinking of but none directly from the board…

a donkey from shrek is standing in the dirt and says nope on the bottom ALT: a donkey from shrek is standing in the dirt and says nope on the bottom

I feel like I’ve DEFINITELY seen some at some stage in my career, but can I find any of them for the life of me now that I want them?
Of course not…

a cartoon chicken is asking can you help me . ALT: a cartoon chicken is asking can you help me .

Hive mind, I need some help to find exam questions that I’m 99% sure exist…
Foundation tier either:
Intersection of two lines algebraically (no graphs plz)
Or nice simultaneous equations by substitution where you’re given at least one of the lines in y=mx+c form
Bonus points for Edexcel
#MathsToday

And I am inclined to agree with @didau.bsky.social on this one that:
"Ironically perhaps, this is a call for teachers to know more, not less about their subjects. We need to become experts in how our subjects are learned as well as how they are taught."

But knowing when, where and why to enact many of those strategies for a particular topic and group of students is where the magic happens for me. ✨

This is not to say 'generic' pedagogies do not have a place - using principles from Rosenshine and TLAC have transformed the routines and culture in my classroom immensely, meaning students are ready to learn and more likely to commit things to long-term memory. 🧠

This goes way beyond my own ability to answer a mathematical problem, and I needed to learn it from other, more expert teachers, and through my own experience in the classroom. 🫣

... understand the boundaries of the topic, which questions to use to check student understanding, which misconceptions may form and why, how to avoid or undo that when they have formed, how the topic linked to prior and future learning, how it would be assessed in formal exams...

From beginning my teacher training, I felt that knowing my subject wasn't enough; I needed to know how to teach it, and that is a very different thing.
I needed to be able to build up the concept from the ground up, which examples provided a good grounding, and those that helped to...

The distinction between generic pedagogy, subject knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge is one that I have fought over since reading Shulman's 'Those Who Understand' in my ECT years. It has never felt enough to me to know maths well, or to know some strategies to use in the classroom.

... only to then realise there is little substance to the content... and I have never thought to consider its application to teachers before. It made me consider the number of ITT/ECTs with phenomenal presence, but still need to develop their content knowledge. And I know I won't be alone in that.

Thoroughly enjoyed this blog from @didau.bsky.social
daviddidau.substack.com/p/the-merits...

I hadn't specifically heard of the Dr Fox Effect before, but have certainly been in many presentations where the audience (& myself) have been charmed by the speaker due to their skills as a presenter... 😬

I have! And I still need to blog about the last mathsconf session on it too…. Turns out starting a new job and presenting in the same week isn’t conducive to blog writing 😂😂

If you email support@drfrost.org someone can sort that very quickly ☺️

Also Ctrl + Shift + - for subscripts!

There’s a handy guide for this on @drfrostresource.bsky.social - I can’t find it atm as away but I’m sure someone will link it!

Me tooooo 😢😢😢😢

Wall on a house in Warsaw with tessellating pattern.

Circular atrium at University of Warsaw Library, taken from roof garden.

Solar panels and water feature on stairs at the Roof Garden at University Library in Warsaw.

Pedestrian Crossing in Warsaw Centrum, painted to look like a piano keyboard.

More #MathsOnHoliday vibes and a bit of music too!
Warsaw is amaaaaaaazing 🤩

2nd for us! But we Tay-gated your night! 😂

Oooh I was here then too! I didn’t see them then though haha… what night did you go?!

Not a traditional #mathstoday as I’ve finished teaching a few days early to get to my brother’s wedding in Poland 🇵🇱 💒
We’re staying near the University of Warsaw Library and it has these amazing panels with various topics embossed… I may or may not have gasped “oh my gosh, it’s Pi ” from afar 😂🤓

Ah true - I really hadn’t seen it that way at all until you just said it! As queen of the ratio table, I am upset with myself 😂

Oooh why so? It feels a lot less “proportion-y” to me than true proportion questions

Then someone said “we’re sharing equally so we need to just divide the total!”
ET VOILA - the mean average!
They were having so much fun that we were 3 mins late for line up… 😂
Quite proud, as that group don’t always enjoy a maths lesson… let alone on Friday period 5! 🥹#mathstoday

In #mathstoday Year 8 we’re considering how to “average out” objects fairly when given out “unfairly” to begin with using @studymaths.bsky.social Averages and Range tiles on Maths Bot.
mathsbot.com/manipulative...
We added more and more blocks until it became a bit of a pain to move things around…

Double number lines are hard to come by, to be honest! There’s a few older NCETM resources if you look hard enough but I’m not sure where now.
Boxes blogs from Don Steward.
Ratio tables generator on MathsBot @studymaths.bsky.social 🙂
But tbh any direct proportion question will do!

Thanks as always to @rogershistory.bsky.social for asking me to host and trusting me to host solo this time! 😱

The OCR Maths Team are really keen to hear from more teachers on this, so you can find them on socials, pop them an email or even join their Teacher Panel here: ocrpanel.recollective.com/maths-adviso...

And I really enjoyed hearing from James Butterworth about how this feels in the classroom; what he sees working in the classroom, what he thinks isn’t, and his experience with Core Maths and how that’s shaped his practice in his GCSE teaching and the “relevance” of the current curriculum.