Newington Primary School
Newington School is a primary school in Annan, Dumfries and Galloway. It has around 370 pupils.
Neil Armstrong, deputy headteacher, discusses the whole-school programme
The previous headteacher of Newington Primary School had a vision for maths as a problem solving activity in which pupils should be challenged to think. As a result the school had a wide variety of problem solving resources for teachers to choose from, including puzzles and word problems. However, there was no progressive programme until about three years ago when the P7 teacher, Heather Cross, went on an in-service training (INSET) day about problem solving.
The result was that senior staff devised a programme based around four different coloured folders of activities. Each folder focuses on different strategies and is appropriate for a particular stage: for example, the orange folder is for infants and focuses on patterns.
Teachers choose whether to teach problem solving once a week or in blocks. Infants are expected to colour in a smiley (or otherwise) face to show how they managed each problem they tackle, and older pupils fill in a formal sheet recording the colour of the folder the problem came from, the name and number of the problem and the strategy used to solve it.
| Neil Armstrong discusses the problem solving programme | |
|---|---|
| Description | Neil Armstrong describes the implementation of a progressive problem solving programme, the organisation of resources and pupils' recording |
| Duration | 2 minutes 35 seconds |
| Windows version |  Windows Media video: Neil Armstrong discusses the problem solving programme |
| Mac version |  QuickTime movie: Neil Armstrong discusses the problem solving programme |
| Transcript | Neil Armstrong discusses the problem solving programme |