Teach-Secondary-Issue-14.5

Stop pedalling, START PADDLING For some students, maths instruction can seem like a foreign language – but there is a way of making it make sense, says Rebecca Ginger I nmaths lessons, there can sometimes be an obstacle that prevents certain students from grasping and retaining the fundamentals of the subject. Children who struggle to fully understand the abstract nature of numbers early on may make some progress, but the impact on their learning by the time they get to KS4 will be considerable. It’s similar to a language barrier, in that these children simply aren’t able to absorb the content and language of their lessons as they need to. Standing still That was the case withme when I was at school. In every maths lesson, it felt like I was pedalling furiously underwater, just to reach the basic level. I’d sometimes come up with shortcuts for, say, multiplication, only to hit a wall when it came to number bonds. I know the fear of maths that some children can have. I saw it inmy own daughter, who experienced some of the ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rebecca Ginger is the founder and CEO of Fables World; for more details, visit fables.world same problems at school that I did. I know howmuch work these students have to put in, just to stand still. To be clear, teachers do a brilliant job for most children. The issue is with those who get left behind, because we’re currently seeing 47% of children getting 4s or lower in their maths GCSEs. That’s nearly half the country. Anotherway When studying for my A Levels, I’d avoid the usual memorisation and revision methods, like making spider diagrams, as I could never commit them to memory. Instead, I found myself creating amusing poems with visual images to help me remember things. Whenmy daughter began experiencing similar issues to me with her maths schoolwork, I was told by her teachers that she’d never pass an exam in her life. I understood what she was going through, but also knew that there must be another way we could try. At the time, I was working in television as a producer and director, which involves being given large volumes of information and turning that into a visual sequence that’s intelligible to everyone. I sought to apply those skills to my daughter’s learning, while reading up on the psychology of memory – what humans find easy to remember, for instance, and how religious texts have traditionally been passed down as stories. The challenge was to adapt the material my daughter needed to learn into a format she could understand – and it worked. Turning numbers into characters, and maths instruction into stories, led to a transformation in her progress that saw her go from the bottom of her class to the top. After people started asking what I’d done, I continued to develop and refine the approach, research the area further and apply what I learned through tutoring sessions for the next five years. Character studies A team of researchers was once tasked with investigating why a hospital was seeing a rise in rates of infection. It turned out that staff weren’t washing their hands properly. When the written instructions in staff preparation areas were swapped out for virtually text-free visual instructions that employed graphics and icons, those infection rates dropped dramatically. That approach is similar to what we’re doing nowwith the FablesWorld maths learning platform. We present numbers as characters – ‘7’ is a boomerang, for example, ‘8’ is a snowman – and imbue themwith distinct personalities, whichmakes them easier to remember. The platform is tailored for 4- to 14-year-olds; in secondary schools we’re largely used by Y7s and Y8s in catch-up sessions. After just one hour of using the platform, these students suddenly realise that they can divide and multiply numbers; that it’s not just them, that they’re not stupid, and that they can actually do this. After that, their use of the platformwill involve just a daily 5-minute login, typically for around 20 days, after which they’ll no longer need to attend catch-up sessions. Because once these students are given the right tools, they no longer feel scared. They understand what their maths teacher is telling them and want to keep going. My daughter, who would ‘never pass an exam?’ She eventually got an A star in A Level maths. She’d been drifting on a life raft – but when she was given a paddle, she was off. 61 teachwire.net/secondary M AT H S