Teaching Secondary Maths through Representations

Teaching Secondary Maths through Representations

Building coherence across Years 7 - 11

Feedback from exam boards and teachers indicates there are key areas of the GCSE maths curriculum that students continue to find challenging. Naturally, teachers need to address students’ immediate difficulties with regard to misconceptions, but there is growing recognition that these issues are often rooted in earlier learning. This Work Group aims to tackle these problems by using key representations to improve and develop understanding in pupils.

Focus on Representation

Through collaboration and shared experience, teachers work together to ‘unpick’ challenging topics and develop strategies to support learners. By utilising the CPA model, teachers will explore the use of key representations to support Secondary students. Included in these will be: algebra tiles, bar models, desmos graphing tools, double number lines and ratio tables.

What will participating schools gain?

Participating in this Work Group will give teachers and schools the opportunity to review and improve the quality of teaching & learning in many topic areas by exposing
the vital connections to students through the use of representations
Teaching through Representations aims to develop teachers’ depth of subject knowledge and classroom practice. The aim is for Work Group participants to disseminate learning to others in their department through lesson study

What will the Work Groups achieve?

Professional learning:

In this Work Group, participants will:

Develop a deeper insight into the structure that underpins Maths at Secondary

Develop an understanding of key issues and misconceptions behind the topic

Deepen their own subject knowledge and awareness of connections within the curriculum.

Practice development:

Participants will explore key representations and plan a series of lessons using them with pupils. They will use and evaluate representations to build coherence across Years 7-11.

Work Group expectations

For this Work Group, schools should aim to provide one or two teachers to attend training and work together within their department. There will be 4 sessions throughout the year.

Please contact admin@anglesmathshub.org if you have any further questions.