Last week I listened to discussions of the Ofsted report into the teaching of Maths in secondary schools.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-18152706
Quotes from the article highlight the issues:
A slightly edited version of Salman's narrative is below.
"Imagine learning how to ride a bicycle, I give you some lessons and then let you go away and practice for a little bit and then you come back and I assess your bike riding ability. Now your have real trouble with left turns and you can't quite stop, so I assess you as an 80% bicyclist and give you C. Now we move on and start to learn to ride a motorcycle."
In essence what he is saying, is that we are asking students to move onto the more complex subjects when they have not mastered the pre-requisites for what comes next. I experienced this throughout my education with chemistry. I struggled with math for a long time because during my early education I jumped from school to school, first in New York, then Belgium, Scotland, Wisconsin. The end result is I never really got my head around a whole bunch of basic math functions, and had to pick them up along the way. It was finally when doing my Masters in Neuroscience that I worked out why, and started going back and relearning from scratch some basic math. Once I had done that everything else started coming easier.
The flip side of this problem was experienced by my brother. He was in school in New York as a kid and was marked out by his teachers as being lazy and disruptive. Truth of the matter was he was just bored. He knew all the math subject they were teaching him. It was only when he was assessed that it turned out he was about 2 years ahead of the rest of his class, and he skipped two grades. By the time he got to Madison Wisconsin he ended up having to take Math classes at the University of Wisconsin when he was 15 years old. Now although intellectually my brother was ready to go to University socially he would probably agree he was not.
We will always have classes of mixed ability, the question we have is what we do about it. By having teachers with a fixed lesson plan with subjects like math we force everyone in the class to learn at the same pace. This is fundamentally wrong to expect this of children or even of adults.
So how do we address this. Salman Khan's suggestion is that we flip the class. Which means that the students get the lesson as home work by watching a video where the topic is demonstrates and the problem is worked through with examples. Then what would traditionally be homework-lots of math problems- are done in class where the teacher can guide and help. This echoes what I suggested in previous posts- teachers would be responsible for learning and leave the teaching to the high quality professionally filmed and illustrated videos.
Now this suggestion is not new. In fact it is the principle behind the Kumon approach to teaching math. Kids don't move on to the next subject until they get 100%. The Kumon "teachers" are there to facilitate and encourage.
The Khan Academy
If you have children I I really suggest you take a look at the Khan Academy. What Salman has done is not only record an enormous number of videos and exercises starting from telling the time to 2nd Order Linear Homogeneous Differential Equation, he has also built up a curriculum to take students through the subjects to lead the student through the subjects.
Combine this with a dashboard for parent or teachers to monitor the students progress what you have is an alternative to a one size fits all lesson for children in schools.
Go to Khan Academy, tell your friends, show it to your children's teachers, school Govenors and start a discussion on how it could be used. At the moment it is a bit US centric on the curriculum, but I believe a future upgrade will allow people to create their own custom maps like the one above. It is amazing to start with and will only get better. http://www.khanacademy.org/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-18152706
Quotes from the article highlight the issues:
- "Our failure to stretch some of our most able pupils threatens the future supply of well-qualified mathematicians, scientists and engineers."
- "Too many pupils who have a poor start or fall behind early in their mathematics education never catch up," he says.
- "The 10% who do not reach the expected standard at age seven doubles to 20% by age 11, and nearly doubles again by 16"
- "Schools must focus on equipping all pupils, particularly those who fall behind or who find mathematics difficult, with the essential knowledge and skills they need to succeed in the next stage of their mathematics education."
A slightly edited version of Salman's narrative is below.
"Imagine learning how to ride a bicycle, I give you some lessons and then let you go away and practice for a little bit and then you come back and I assess your bike riding ability. Now your have real trouble with left turns and you can't quite stop, so I assess you as an 80% bicyclist and give you C. Now we move on and start to learn to ride a motorcycle."
In essence what he is saying, is that we are asking students to move onto the more complex subjects when they have not mastered the pre-requisites for what comes next. I experienced this throughout my education with chemistry. I struggled with math for a long time because during my early education I jumped from school to school, first in New York, then Belgium, Scotland, Wisconsin. The end result is I never really got my head around a whole bunch of basic math functions, and had to pick them up along the way. It was finally when doing my Masters in Neuroscience that I worked out why, and started going back and relearning from scratch some basic math. Once I had done that everything else started coming easier.
The flip side of this problem was experienced by my brother. He was in school in New York as a kid and was marked out by his teachers as being lazy and disruptive. Truth of the matter was he was just bored. He knew all the math subject they were teaching him. It was only when he was assessed that it turned out he was about 2 years ahead of the rest of his class, and he skipped two grades. By the time he got to Madison Wisconsin he ended up having to take Math classes at the University of Wisconsin when he was 15 years old. Now although intellectually my brother was ready to go to University socially he would probably agree he was not.
We will always have classes of mixed ability, the question we have is what we do about it. By having teachers with a fixed lesson plan with subjects like math we force everyone in the class to learn at the same pace. This is fundamentally wrong to expect this of children or even of adults.
So how do we address this. Salman Khan's suggestion is that we flip the class. Which means that the students get the lesson as home work by watching a video where the topic is demonstrates and the problem is worked through with examples. Then what would traditionally be homework-lots of math problems- are done in class where the teacher can guide and help. This echoes what I suggested in previous posts- teachers would be responsible for learning and leave the teaching to the high quality professionally filmed and illustrated videos.
Now this suggestion is not new. In fact it is the principle behind the Kumon approach to teaching math. Kids don't move on to the next subject until they get 100%. The Kumon "teachers" are there to facilitate and encourage.
The Khan Academy
If you have children I I really suggest you take a look at the Khan Academy. What Salman has done is not only record an enormous number of videos and exercises starting from telling the time to 2nd Order Linear Homogeneous Differential Equation, he has also built up a curriculum to take students through the subjects to lead the student through the subjects.
Go to Khan Academy, tell your friends, show it to your children's teachers, school Govenors and start a discussion on how it could be used. At the moment it is a bit US centric on the curriculum, but I believe a future upgrade will allow people to create their own custom maps like the one above. It is amazing to start with and will only get better. http://www.khanacademy.org/
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