Maths Blog

News from Mathsblog.co.uk: Free cookbook for children
One of the best ways of improving children’s knowledge of the metric system is by using practical activities. Cooking is an excellent way of getting to grips with grams, ml etc. So it was good today to see the government encouraging young children to learn to cook by publishing a cookbook that headteachers can order and distribute free of charge.
The recipe ideas have all been nominated by the general public as those which all children should be able to cook and include such delicacies as  cheese sauce, beef curry and cottage pie. Good to see that they are using metric units, but I would like to see a few raisins added to the coleslaw recipe.
They are also available from the teachernet site in pdf format.

Well the end of the earth has not happened. Scientists at Cern have successfully fired two protons round the Large Hadron Collider this morning.
Probably the most famous and expensive experiment ever set up it deserves our encouragement and enthusiasm. Plenty of maths and physics on show!! I’m not going into detail here about the Higgs Boson particle etc, but it is just the kind of news that we need if we are ever going to encourage young people to take up Physics and Maths at A level rather than Media Studies or Tourism!
As Dr Shears explained
“Our experiments are so huge, so complex and so expensive that they don’t come along very often. When they do, we get all the physics out of them that we can.”

News from mathsblog.co.uk

Balls to end SATs?

For the first time Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, has hinted that there might to be an end to SAT tests as we know them for our 11 year olds.

On the telly today he told Andrew Marr,

“The current system is not set in stone. We are looking currently at a way in which we could assess progress child by child with individual level tests where the tests would be chosen in a way which was right for the child, rather than everybody doing the same test on the same day. For 2009, we are going to do the same kind of tests as in previous years before the problems with ETS, but for the long term I am really keen to get this right, to listen.”

After this summer’s fiasco then it must be applauded that he is considering alternatives, but, of course, there is every chance that we end up with something even more bureaucratic, if that’s possible. We will wait and see!

What influences children’s achievement by the age of 10?
Well that’s something we would all like to know, but a recent study from the University of London, published in the journal ‘Science’, suggests that there are a number of crucial factors, including:
1. the education of the child’s mother
2. playing word and number games at home
3. going to a good pre-school nursery or primary school
A good home learning environment is crucial and this is often created by mothers who have a good educational background themselves – a fairly obvious statement I would think.
However, there are plenty of cases where a mother’s lower level of education is more than made up for by creating a good home learning environment. Reading stories, singing nursery rhymes and playing games involving shape and space are all factors.
Professor Melhuish goes on to say,
“The results indicated that home learning environment, pre-school effectiveness and primary school effectiveness all make separate, significant impacts.”
So go on, get the board games out and spend a great afternoon playing and talking with your children – it does them good!