Maths at Hoon Hay

A morning at Hoon Hay school
This morning we travelled to Hoon Hay school to see their Maths programme. I have had some time to reflect on a couple of points that I took from the morning.  Wendy Dent was the presenter and she talked a lot about using mixed ability grouping in Maths.  At first I was surprised to hear that this was how they group children through the whole school in Maths.   This, I feel, linked in nicely with the whole Growth Mindset approach.  Wendy talked about how the children that are ability grouped often see themselves as being better at something that others or not as good as others.  They judge their own ability by how they perceive others ability in the group eg If they are in a group with Fred who isn't as good at Maths as Mary, then they begin to believe they too are not good at Maths.  If we, as teachers use mixed grouping, then this confuses the perceived heirachy and all children learn to believe in themselves and in their ability.  They can also learn from each other.
We saw the different classes using a problem solving approach which was really interesting.  It was great to see the NE classes so engaged in solving the problems.  Each class ( regardless of level) did a lot of talking about the problem, what information they knew, what information they didn't know from reading the problem and then went away with a Maths buddy and worked on different ways of solving the problem.  I found this really interesting and it was great to see a system or a "formula" work across all the levels of the school.
I liked the way the childern worked so well together.  In the NE class, the teacher had a great "hook" for the children which involved having a mystery envelope with a number in it.  They had to make the number as many different ways as possible.  I will use this in my own practice.  The teacher was saying that it has now become a bit of a competition between the children who are trying to 'outdo' each other with winning the most ways of making the number.  I have been thinking of some ways that I could expand some tof these sorts of activities.
It was great to listen to someone who is so passionate about teaching maths.  I found her to be quite inspirational.