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VIEW FROM THE CLASSROOM


the things we want their child to learn and how the learning is delivered. Another comment made by Nansi Ellis, assistant general secretary of ATL, in an interview with Newsround was that "there is other good stuff you can do at home, like reading, playing sport or a musical instrument, or helping with the cooking.” By getting involved in their child’s learning through the online resource, parents are encouraged to set their child other related challenges; for example, working out how much change they are due after shopping, or determining how much time needs to be allowed to get to school on time.


You state that one of your objectives of setting home learning is to bring parent into their child’s learning, but many parents are just too busy to spend time helping their child with their homework. How do you deal with this challenge? The beauty of the Matific resource is that the children can do the activities alone or with their parents; there is no need for parents to ‘teach’ their child anything. Understanding the day-to- day demands of parents, we wanted them to be as involved as they could be without this stopping the children themselves from benefiting.


Can you give me an example of how your home-learning protocol works on a day to day basis? Taking one day as an example, we may have been focusing on time: some children will have grasped it immediately, others may need more learning support. So, for homework, I set some problem- solving activities from Matific for each child depending on their level of development. One of my students just couldn’t get her head


around fractions. I’d used as many images, cake segments, and tactile learning as I could to explain the concept, but nothing seemed to ‘click’ with her. I then gave her a few related problem- solving activities from the online resource and she got it! I was lucky enough to be sitting next to her


January 2019


and witnessed how she did it and the joy on her face; it was the sort of experience that all teachers cherish.


Are there any benefits of such online learning resources over face to face classroom teaching? The two should work together. Our home learning is designed to consolidate what we teach students in the classroom. Matific is full of visual images, graphics, and animations to explain each problem. We all know that visualisation stimulates the imagination, enhances involvement with a concept, and improves mental imagery. Students who internalise information are far more likely to retain it and be able to apply it in a meaningful and relevant way. All teachers look for images both static and interactive, to visually demonstrate a particular concept, but searching for visuals that exactly match the level of learning of each child takes time. For this reason, the online resource we use makes our teachers’ lives easier by having the right visual at each stage of development. I must stress, however, that it is important to


remember that for a visualisation to be effective, it must make connections between existing knowledge, and the knowledge being taught. If they don’t possess the knowledge to understand the graphical entities and the relations between them, the visualisation won’t achieve its goal. Without the teacher to introduce them to an understanding of a specific skill, even the most interactive animations will have limited benefits.


How do you know that your students are learning to ‘love’ maths? It is easy for us to see that the children can’t wait to get home to ‘play’, as they describe it! The beauty of the system we use is that it develops each child’s resilience, understanding, and perseverance; the children never get a question ‘wrong’ per se; they are simply asked to consider another way of reaching the final goal and given ideas of how to get there.


www.education-today.co.uk 17


One boy in my class was ill at home for a few


days. He spent most of his time in bed completing the maths ‘games’ (as he saw them). The beauty of the way we manage home learning is that the children are consolidating their learning, and loving maths. I can see exactly who has been doing what activities, their results, and their progress. One final question. As your home learning is based on access to an online resource, what happens to the children who don’t have access to computers at home? For most children and parents, these activities are proving to be highly effective and popular, but of course we can never be sure that every child will have free access to a computer. We have therefore set up time in the school day, at the end of their computing lesson, when they are given ‘down time’. During this time, they are encouraged to use the computers for their home learning or any other learning activities.


uhttp://www.widmerend.bucks.sch.uk


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