We hope you are all keeping safe and well during these difficult times. In the last month, we have continued to be inspired by the pace and creativity in which the education community has adapted to this temporary new online world. As one of 40 NCETM Maths Hubs we are proud to share the support that the wider NCETM have been preparing for parents and teachers during school closure. Our Primary Teaching for Mastery Lead, Dil Dias, has been not only using them in his work life but also as parent of 3 primary aged children. “It’s a big thumbs up for the Lesson Videos not only from my children but as a great demonstration on how Mastery Specialists use the Primary PD materials."
Our amazing team of Work Group Leads have been busy adapting their Work Groups for this new online world and are now contacting their participants with more details. It’s still possible to join our Lesson Design Work Group, led by Adelle McCarthy, with the first session taking place on: Thursday 7th May 2020 10am – 10.30am. We are also planning to provide short taster webinars of our Work Groups later this term. If you’ve always wanted to know what participants get up to in these Work Groups, for example, EYFS, Effective Use of Tools in Year 6 and Year 7, Mathematical Thinking or A Level Pedagogy then look out for further updates. Many edtech companies, organisations and individuals have reached out with offers of free resources and professional development to support mathematics teachers, parents and pupils’ during this time. The gesture and volume have simply been overwhelming! We will keep you posted through twitter, mailshots and our website. To whet your appetite why not try... CPD for teachers of Further Maths, (King's Maths School) and online catch up programmes (Sparx).
Although it’s hard to think at this moment about planning for 20/21, we are delighted that the Maths Hub Programme have fully funded CPD opportunities to further expand our LLME community, Local Leaders of Mathematics Education including the NCETM accredited PD Lead Programme, becoming a Teaching for Mastery Specialist, and for SLEs to develop their leadership capacity to support School Improvement.
Since sharing my reflections on the transition to online learning at the beginning of the lockdown we have heard from many teachers and schools on how they are adapting their provision. Whether they are TEAMing, ZOOMing, GOOGLing, LOOMing, CASTing, or using other systems you cannot help but be blown away by the care, speed and effectiveness of what they are providing. Our feedback is conferring the key findings and implications from the recent Rapid Evidence Assessment on Remote Learning from the Education Endowment Foundation. What matters most is Teacher Quality, Access to Technology, Peer Interaction, Independent Work, Adapted to Contexts. We couldn’t agree more!