Top tips for parents, students and schools as they navigate their way through the exam season.

Parents

• Anxiety – yours and theirs. Firstly, the more anxious you are, the more anxiety you transmit. Avoid stories about how stressful you found exams. This doesn’t help. Careful planning and use of time, building in breaks when studying and sharing leisure time in between helps
• Friends can be a big distraction! Limit access to friends during study time – this includes texting! Mobile phones in exams are a no no! Last year there were 300 disqualifications because of phones. Have a quiet word and keep yours off.
• Study space. Make sure your offspring has somewhere quiet to spread out and put learning resources out. This might include sticking up summary posters.
• Sleep. Restrict cramming before an exam. Encourage early night and early rise with some proper breakfast.
• Talk, talk. Talk through any anxieties and listen to them rather than trying to correct them.
• Stop banging on about neatness, spelling and grammar in exams! Only 5% of the marks are allocated to spelling, punctuation and grammar - so that you can still get 95% and an A*.
• What are your last words as they go off? Positive? Negative? Coercive? Threatening? Go for something supportive…

Students

• Plan your time. Build up study time to 20 – 40 minutes with 5 minute stretch breaks in between. Go for three sessions. Vary your revision subjects. Start with your least favourite and finish with your strongest: no more than three subjects a night
• Put past exams behind you. Past exams are history: focus on what’s next
• Use the room you are studying in to help you: put posters up, shut your eyes and try and remember what’s on them; spread your notes out in sequential order and talk yourself through them
• Be your own teacher – talk yourself through answers to questions and instead of trying to remember lots of information turn it into questions to answer
• Rather than cram – graze! Make summary maps of all the topics you are likely to be asked about and then sit back and go over them quickly.
• Breathe deeply at the beginning of the exam; chew a glucose sweet; read through all the questions and write any notes or formulae next to the question straight away
• Pick your banker questions and start with ones which you know you can do. Remember to use the number of marks for each question as a guide and make sure you have a go at the compulsory questions. If you are running out of time do a question in outline only – write notes on the key points, use key words or if it’s maths the key formulae

Schools

• Give any student who underperformed during the mock examinations another known mock exam a few weeks prior to the examination period.
• Pay your best teachers to deliver revision sessions during the Easter holidays and then some evenings leading up to exams to targeted students.
• Have a warm up session before each exam. This could be a Powerpoint overview projected onto a large screen.
• Start the exam half an hour later. Arrive early, have a set of short revision seminars for 45 minutes, then a 15 minute organised stretch break then in.
• Ensure that all staff are producing high quality revision lessons right up until the day of the examination
• Have a display - by subject – of typical questions and bullet point A* summary responses. Give small versions of the summaries to every student.
• Have a coursework runner to ensure that all coursework is in on time. This person does nothing other than liaise between students and teachers over coursework

Oli Sparks was a Science teacher for 11 years during which she held the responsibilities of Head of Science, Head of Upper School and Assistant Headteacher. She is currently studying for an MSc in Sport Psychology at Bangor University. Here she provides her Seven Habits for Highly Effective Learning.

1. Practise ‘wait time’. When asking a question which requires thinking about an answer, appear distracted or look away. This reduces pressure and allows a composed response.
2. Be positive in your non verbal communication. For example, maintain an open body posture, actively listen and nod, and maintain good eye contact unless practising ‘wait time’. This relaxes and encourages the learner.
3. Encourage the learner to make choices. This enables better coping strategies and less anxiety.
4. When a task is too complex, return to the next level down. This encourages the learner to feel more self-assured and to progress.
5. Acknowledge the learner’s feelings. If people feel understood, they will feel more confident in independent learning.
6. Give regular feedback. For beginners, use general feedback. As learning becomes more complex, feedback should be more precise. This enhances learning and builds confidence.
7. Explain the rationale for a task. If a learner understands why they are completing a task, motivation will come from within.

Information was inspired by the observation of a highly effective coach, and the chapter on ‘Applying empowerment in coaching: some considerations, in L. Kidman ‘Developing decision makers: An empowerment approach to coaching’ (R.Jones, 2001). The above was written to integrate thoughts on these, with practice in education.

If you have already registered for Alite 2005, we are looking forward to welcoming you to the Café Royal on 24th June. Please follow this link for more information on how to get the most from your day.

If you have already registered for Alite 2005, we are looking forward to welcoming you to the Café Royal on 24th June. The day will present an exciting mixture of keynote presentations interspersed with case study presentations showcasing the best of practice from schools around the country. To gain the very most from the day’s opportunities we recommend that you look at the case study descriptors in advance and think about which ones you would like to view in the 3 slots available. See the Alite 2005 Case Study descriptors.

Maths Anxiety is a very real problem for some learners, and symptoms may include panic or paranoia. Cath Daley reports on recent research, and offers tips on how to reduce maths anxiety in your classroom.

Cath Daley is an experienced teacher and manager whose experience as a former Advanced Skills teacher helps her in her work with Alite delivering Alite for Numeracy programmes. Here she makes it all work out for you…

Do you ever worry about having to work out everyone’s part of the bill when you dine out with a group of friends? Do you believe that you simply do not have a maths mind? Do you avoid activities that may involve maths? If any one of these situations applies to you, you may be suffering from “maths anxiety”.

Worrying about being bad at maths can be a self-fulfilling prophecy according to British research. It seems that just like the Little Red Engine going up the hill because “I think I can, I think I can”, many of us may struggle with maths purely because “I think I can’t, I think I can’t”

Pupils in schools, and subsequently throughout their lives, put too much effort into worrying about sums rather than into unravelling and solving them. “Maths anxiety” can take root in children as young as 10 or even earlier, experts believe.

Dr. Sheila Ford from Staffordshire University has led a team of scientists investigating “maths anxiety” and they recently presented their findings at the British Psychological Society’s Annual Conference in Manchester. They identified the condition as a distinct form of anxiety which interferes with the brain’s working memory. It can mean that even individuals who should be competent at maths find simple arithmetic beyond them. This unique form of stress could cause sufferers problems with such daily tasks as checking change and calculating personal finances.

Dr. Ford asked 52 participants to complete 180 problems displayed on a computer screen. The problems involved recalling letters, carrying out mathematical calculations or both simultaneously. Before completing the problems each participant completed a questionnaire that assessed how anxious they felt about completing mathematical tasks.
Participants with high levels of maths anxiety were less accurate and made larger errors on the mathematical tasks and surprisingly were also poorer at remembering the serial order of letters, but only when they were performing a concurrent maths task.

“There is a theory that maths anxiety is a form of anxiety in its own right which has an effect on performance. It doesn’t just apply to people who are poor at maths. People who are perfectly competent at maths can be affected in a way that makes them perform less well than they would do without maths anxiety. We think it interferes with working memory, the memory you need to do calculations. It’s thought that anxious, intrusive thoughts compete for limited memory resources and this may disrupt the calculation processes involved in mathematical problem solving” said Dr. Ford.

She did not say how prevalent “maths anxiety” is but believes it affects “large numbers” of people.

Ford’s team is now looking at what strategies maths anxious people employ when trying to work out sums. “They might think they know the answer, but are not confident, so they resort to complicated counting strategies. If you rely on counting on your fingers, rather than employing tricks such as rounding up, you are much more dependent on working memory”.

The idea of “maths anxiety” however is not new. Ashcraft & Kirk working at Cleveland University reported similar research results in 2001.These earlier studies found that maths anxiety temporarily boosts heart rate and other physical indicators of negative stress.

What are the symptoms of Maths Anxiety?

Panic – learners have a feeling of helplessness. They feel that a brick wall has come down and they will never do better in maths. They fear getting the wrong answer.
Paranoia – learners have the feeling that everyone knows the answer except them.
Passive – learners have an attitude that they either have a “maths mind” or they don’t. There is nothing they can do to become better at maths. They sit back and take no action.
Lack of confidence – they don’t trust their intuition. They rely on memorising rules rather than understanding the concepts.

Where does “maths anxiety” come from?

It is an intense emotional feeling of anxiety that people have about their ability to understand and do mathematics which harms future learning. It does not have a single cause. Often it is the result of a person’s negative or embarrassing experience with maths or a maths teacher in previous years. It also comes from the fact that maths has an image problem in our society. It is commonly accepted that mathematics is difficult, obscure and only of interest to “nerds” and “geeks”! The consequence is that in many English-speaking countries people who are talented at maths or profess enjoyment of it are often treated as if they are not quite normal and invariably young people are exposed to this anti-maths bias from a young age. This attitude is not shared by other societies, e.g. Russia and Germany who enjoy a centuries long tradition of leadership in mathematics.

7 Maths Myths

There are many erroneous beliefs about maths that contribute to learners’ fears and so promote the development of maths anxiety. Some common ones are:

• An aptitude for maths is inborn – it is inborn, in all of us. It is a human trait, shared by the entire race. Reasoning with abstract ideas is the province of every individual.
• There is a best way to do a maths problem – most problems can be solved in a number of ways
• Men are better at maths than women – research has failed to show any difference between the sexes in maths ability
• To be good at maths you have to be good at calculating– being a wiz at figures is not the mark of success in maths.
• It’s bad to count on your fingers - counting on fingers indicates an understanding of arithmetic. (A Chinese abacus is a sophisticated version of counting on your fingers.)
• Those who are good at maths do problems quickly in their heads – even maths professors review examples before teaching them.
• Maths is unrelated to life – maths is all around you. Freeing yourself from the fear of maths adds choices and freedom to your life.

So what can we do about Maths Anxiety? As part of her research Dr Sheila Ford introduced relaxation techniques to a group of 10 year olds suffering from maths anxiety. She found that their reported anxiety decreased and their performance on a maths test improved. The results lasted for a period of about five weeks.

Other studies have shown that psychological therapies that reduce maths worries improve maths performance.

Seven (plus three) ways to reduce maths anxiety in your classroom

1. Help learners to develop positive self-talk. This is effective in overcoming belief in the maths myths.
2. Be aware of thoughts, feelings and actions as they are related to maths. Maths anxiety affects different learners in different ways.
3. Work on having and promoting a positive attitude to maths. Having a positive attitude will build confidence and reduce anxiety.
4. Teach learners relaxation techniques and use these before a maths task.
5. Encourage learners to “talk maths” and feed back their answers as a group rather than individually.
6. Provide multi-sensory maths activities to engage all of the learners.
7. Use relaxing music as a background to a maths task.
8. Encourage learners to ask questions of you and of each other.
9. Use opportunities to focus on the process rather than concentrating on getting the correct answer.
10. Make maths fun!

For other examples of strategies to reduce maths anxiety and much, much more see the Alite for Numeracy course.

Christine Brown, a Teaching and Learning Consultant working in the Mathematics School Effectiveness Group in Westminster, was the lucky winner of the first prize in our draw at the Education Show in March. Christine wins a free pass to our conference Alite 2005 Personalising Learning at the Café Royal on 24th June. Congratulations, Christine, and we all look forward to meeting you.

What is education for? And what, actually, is ‘creativity’? Simon Percival reports on Creative Partnerships.

What is education for? A fundamental question for educators. Is it about fostering children’s growth, mentally, spiritually, morally? Is it perhaps about helping the individual child get the best job s/he can and/or supplying a skilled workforce for the future? Whatever your view, it is becoming increasingly clear that creativity has a key role to play and Creative Partnerships (CP) are facilitating schools’ thinking and implementation of ideas to make this happen.

Funded through the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and topped up by £2 million annually from the DfES, there are 36 Creative Partnerships nationally. The idea behind their existence is a straightforward one: to animate and develop creativity in the national curriculum, in all areas of learning – including science, geography, maths and history (not just the arts!); and to enrich school life by making best use of the UK's creative wealth. In this way, the programme aims to transform life expectations of the children, the teachers and the partners. In Merseyside, for example, CP has encouraged and aided a cross-curricular study of Native North Americans using sculpting, drama, dancing and music. As a result, there was an improvement in the quality of writing, an increase in self-confidence and risk-taking, as well as higher levels of concentration, self-organisation and interaction when involved in creative tasks. Like all CP, the Merseyside partnership assists in a number of ways, including helping schools identify their needs, developing appropriate programmes, as well as observing and monitoring them, introducing relevant creative individuals to the school and planning the days with these creatives.

But what does a creative school look like? And what, actually, is ‘creativity’? To find out more about how Creative Partnerships works with schools and for many other examples of their work, join us at Alite 2005.