Gifted Pupils
'Good teaching for the gifted and talented has the essential characteristics of good teaching for any pupil but it is particularly dependent on the teachers' own specialist expertise and scholarship. In the best lessons seen, teachers' knowledge of the subject was very secure.'
Providing for gifted and talented pupils (Ofsted, 2001)
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I've heard good things about Andrew Jeffrey and also Kajartan Poskitt (of Murderous Maths fame) once came to me school.
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We’ve taken Year 6 G&T pupils to some very successful nrich workshops at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences, University of Cambridge.
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Storming the Castle day at Norwich castle? It involves some good maths with a history of the castle?
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National Space Centre at Leicester – their Operation Montserrat project is first class
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Worth looking at the Royal Institute Materclasses part of their website?
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I have done some work on the Maths of the Dam Busters, some of which I borrowed from an inspiring teacher I had when training who used to come to school in full RAF uniform to teach it! I played the pupils some of the film clips and made a bomb-sight, looked at the bearings of the flights, used trig to work out angles and distances of the drop, scale drawings of the Lancaster etc. – could be helped by a trip to Duxford?
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How about the Hertfordshire cars whole day activity for G and T? – Maths In Motion Software
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Bletchley park Spymasters
If you are anywhere near Bedfordshire? There are free lectures given at CMS at Cambridge Uni, it depends whether you're tied to a specific day?
The Enigma machine will travel with James but I guess it could make it expensive for such a small number? -
We've successfully used treasure hunts for this kind of age group. How about the group team challenge materials from UKMT? Or the resources in the book Mathematical team games have proved popular on a maths residential trip I ran for 8/9s
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We have based some work on a Farm visit linked into Learning Maths Outside the Classroom work from the NCETM. https://www.ncetm.org.uk/resources/9268
We linked it to science looking at flora and fauna and using quadrants, soil and water testing too with the farmer. We looked at safe ladder angles against a wall, went on an orienteer around the footpaths using compasses. We talked through crop yields and income - large numbers. We estimated how many loaves of bread can be made from a tonne of wheat. We talked and worked through some conversions into euros when selling grain in Europe. We looked at rain guages. We saw the calves and talked of litres and pints of milk.
When back in the classroom we followed it up with Design Your Own Farm - a functional maths activity from
http://www.functionalmathematics.co.uk/farm.htm
Whilst I work in a PRU and these kids are quite challenging and not gifted and talented it was a very useful way in which we could enjoy a lot of meaningful maths.
When we run this again I will encourage the students to use a flip camera and have a maths trail - finding a range of shapes in the environment; looking for real percentages, decimals and fractions; building a 3d shape from straw bales - working together. There is a huge amount of potential.
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Activities
and Resources Project Work and Problem Solving provide an excellent opportunity for the gifted students to excel and develop their skills further/ This excellent selection of resources was put together by a group of Leading Teachers in Cumbria Primes, percentages, Fractions, Area, Pythagoras, Speed Limits, Optimisation - Click here The GCSE Mathematics extension materials are aimed at students who are working towards GCSE Mathematics and would benefit from exposure to mathematics beyond the GCSE specifications - Click here This set of investigative problems looks at a range of topics many of which explore maths beyond the GCSE curriculum (3Mb) - Right Click here and select Save As option A really nice set of monthly maths puzzles available to download from this american school's newsletter. the puzzles often rely on algebra and would probably be suitable for Higher GCSE/A level students, or G&T classes. full solutions are also provided! - Click here |
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Bungee Jumping Pose a simplified problem of a real life practical situation - Click here for an outline activity |
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Bridge Building I have used the theme of Bridge Building and worked with a group of more able pupils from Year 8. The pupils were chosen by considering able Mathematicians, Scientists and Technology Students. There were 9 students working in groups of 3 who researched the construction of bridges, produced planning sheets, scale drawings etc... in line with DT practice. They were taken out of one Maths, one Science and one DT lesson a week for 3 weeks and then they had a 2 afternoon sessions set aside for the final construction of their model. Click here for the activity Click here for the Timetable they worked to |
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It it is worth noting that most
activities can be adapted to extend the thinking of pupils
in the classroom. I have also made use of a number of
the problem solving activities and the contextual questions which can be
found in the Problem Solving Sections of this site. This document identifies some of the ways gifted pupils are catered for by Mark Dawes an AST at Comberton Village College in Cambridgeshire - Click here Other Resources For top 5% For 5% to 10% Meet the challenge of the gifted with support articles, curriculum ideas, Internet investigations and book lists from this American Website. www.hoagiesgifted.org Teaching Mathematics to Able Children by Valsa Koshy – David Fulton Publishers 1-85346-687-5 |
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