Jon: When I arrived at the school in January 2003 the school had just had a follow up HMI Inspection following the initial visit in 2000 - December 2000. And as part of that initial visit HMI had identified that the school needed to improve problem solving strategies in mathematics, but also in environmental studies. For learning through enquiry.
When I arrived they had just had the follow up and HMI had judged that not enough progress had been made.
So clearly when I started, problem solving in maths was one thing that we needed to look at fairly promptly, and so what we've done is we've basically begun again and we're starting to develop problem solving strategies. We are working on a core set of strategies to teach the children and trying to move away from just using one scheme of work, one published scheme. To try and encompass material from lots of areas so that the children are getting a wide variety of input.
We've identified a number of problem solving strategies that we think support the 5-14 Maths Curriculum, and agreed as a staff which classes those strategies will be taught in. And so that by the time the children reach Primary 7 they will have experienced all of the strategies that we've identified.
What we are trying to do with our learning and teaching in problem solving is give the children skills, which they can transfer across the curriculum. I think mathematics is a vehicle where children can learn strategies very easily and effectively. But I also think that we try and offer the children the opportunity here to use those skills, and it's almost to develop an attitude of resilience and not giving in and keep trying with problems. And we do try and encourage the children to use the skills that they've learnt in mathematics in other subject areas.
What we've noticed with our children is early on in our work when they couldn't do a problem they tended to lose concentration fairly quickly. But now what we are finding is that children are more resilient, they keep trying things, if they don't get it right the first time they will take a step back and look at the problem in a different way, and approach it from a different angle and keep going until they get their right answer.