In this month’s Newsletter, we’re highlighting the professional and school development opportunities now available through the Maths Hubs Programme for 2020/21 starting in September.

Also this month:

• Closure of NCETM Communities
• New classroom-based videos to support Secondary Professional Development Materials
• Learning as lockdown eases
• In brief.

Maths Hubs recruitment 2020/21

Opportunities for schools to sign up for work with their local Maths Hub next academic year are now open. The usual mix of projects is on offer, all with the end objective of helping pupils develop solid and sustainable understanding of the maths they meet in lessons. However, this year, given the ongoing uncertainty caused by coronavirus, all work will, in part, address the challenge that schools face of recovering from the outbreak. There will also be flexible ways of teachers collaborating, to take into account the unique in-school demands likely to last well into the new school year.

All NCETM website Communities to close

Online communication, interaction, collaboration and document storage such as that in the Communities on the NCETM website has changed significantly in recent years, and usage of the public Communities has dropped dramatically. As a result, we have decided to close all the Communities on the NCETM website from 31 July 2020.

• Find out more, including what you may need to do before 31 July

New classroom-based videos to support Secondary Professional Development Materials

We’ve started to publish a new series of videos designed to support teachers using our Secondary Mastery Professional Development (PD) Materials. The videos are around five minutes long, and feature a teacher talking to a small number of students from her Year 8 class, using extracts from the PD Materials as a discussion point.

The videos are accompanied by a set of PowerPoint slides designed to support discussions with colleagues about how to get the best from the PD Materials. All videos (which were filmed before lockdown) and PowerPoints are available on our new page of Video Prompts for Deeper Thinking.

Learning as lockdown eases

Although more pupils are getting back to school, much of our focus is still on learning at home. This includes our series of special podcast episodes exploring how schools and teachers are meeting the challenges of providing remote learning in maths, supporting their pupils, while also looking after their own wellbeing.

Our collection of primary video lessons continues to grow, as well as video support for parents of primary and secondary children.

And every Tuesday, 7-8pm, our #mathscpdchat discussions take place over on Twitter, with a focus on learning in lockdown. There’s a summary available for any you may have missed.

In brief

• MEI’s annual conference is being held online (where else?) this year, on 2 and 3 July. There’s a full programme of sessions and entertainment, including guest speaker Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, slam poet Harry Baker, and a conference quiz. It’s free to take part, you can dip in to one or many sessions, and registration is still open
• MathsWorldUK (MWUK) have been developing a series of videos during lockdown, each of which concentrates on the joy of doing mathematics in some specific context or game. These videos have been produced by James Grime, under the umbrella Maths at Home with MathsWorldUK, and can be found on the MWUK YouTube channel.

Please do contact us if you have any comments on this newsletter.

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