Trialling Google Classroom

Google Classroom: a streamlined easy experience
Google Classroom: a streamlined, easy experience

I mentioned early on in my Mathemateers posts that I would be using Google Classroom to help me ‘deliver content’. So a few words about Google Classroom.

It’s easy. Really easy.

As the teacher, I choose my students from the Google Apps for Education users (we have Years 2-6 set up as individual users). The children receive an email to ‘accept’ the invite, or they can enter a code to join the new class that has set up. From there I can do one of two things:

  1. Make an announcement.
  2. Set an assignment.

The only difference in functionality between the two is that the children don’t have to respond to announcements. With assignments I write a title, write a sentence or two of description, set a due date and then I can attach ‘content’ in various ways:

  • as an uploaded attachment,
  • as a Google Drive file (docs, slides, sheets or drawings),
  • as a Youtube video,
  • as a URL.
The assignment screen on Google Classroom
The assignment screen on Google Classroom

It’s over to the students then. Each of my students has a touchscreen Chromebook – this may seem extravagant, but at less than £170 per device I think it is well worth the investment.

I’ve added Google Classroom to the screen of their Chromebooks via the Google Apps admin console, so it’s right there whenever they log on to their device. They can open it and quickly see which assignments they have done, or are yet to do, or (occasionally) are late at handing in.

Like the teacher, they can attach work to their ‘turn in’ comment. So far this has range from Google Drawings to screenshots of other work they have done online. This takes a bit of training, but once they’ve been through the routine a couple of times they soon have the hang of what to do when they have finished their assignment.

So far I’ve mainly used it for homework – it’s so satisfying to know that students are doing meaningful work without sending them home with polypockets full of photocopied worksheets.

It’s early days so far – I’ve only been using it with children for four weeks, but I can’t wait to get it going with the whole school. It may just revolutionise the way we do homework…

Computing is maths

I could say: maths is no longer completely maths.

If you compare the statements in the Maths National curriculum (2014) with the questions in the 2016 sample questions (which is when the first children will be assessed on the 204 National Curriculum you find a curious thing: if you only taught children how to do the things in the National Curriculum, they would do badly on the final test.

For example in the old National Curriculum, children were expected to be taught to make decisions about which operations and problem-solving strategies to use. A comparable statement in the new curriculum is that children should be taught to solve problems, including missing number problems, involving multiplication and division, including positive integer scaling problems and correspondence problems in which n objects are connected to m objects. There is currently no statutory guidance in maths for how problem solving should be taught, only that problems should be solved.

But don’t worry, because computing is maths. In fact in the statutory computing curriculum there are statements that describe how to teach problem solving. For example:

  • solve problems by decomposing them into smaller parts
  • use logical reasoning to explain how some simple algorithms work and to detect and correct errors in algorithms and programs.

In those statements for computing there are clear expectations for how problems can be solved, and I think they apply to maths problems as much as any other subject.

Let’s be clear here. I’m not trying to argue which is the better curriculum; what I am trying to argue is that you can no longer see your children make progress in maths by only teaching maths. You have to teach computing too. Computing is maths.

At the end of the last academic year, like most primary maths subjects leaders I did a maths SATs analysis. What I found was that if our children had solved problems as well as they answered questions about number and calculation, then our school would have been well above average, with the majority of our pupils getting level 5s. As it was, the vast majority of the children scored well into a level 4, but I was left wondering, what if we had taught problem solving just that little bit better…

What the analysis of maths SATs 2014 showed me
What the analysis of maths SATs 2014 showed me

And now the text of the maths national curriculum is even less focused on problem solving and more on arithmetic competence. Yet the tests in 2016 will be unforgiving to those children who have only learned to crunch numbers.

That is why believe me when I say maths is computing and teach computing with all your heart.

We should proud of our computing curriculum in England. Inspired by the Next Gen report by Ian Livingstone and Andy Howe back in 2011, the computing curriculum could become the envy of the world. If only 5% more of our students become competent at computing, imagine the world powerhouse it would make us. Ian Livingstone describes the ideal ‘A’ level combination for a student going into hi-tech industries as maths, physics and art. Computing is not only produced by both the sciences and the arts but it supports learning in the sciences and the arts.

And that is why, when Melissa shone at the computing workshop with Miles Berry at Microsoft headquarters back in January (as I posted last time), I was delighted. It was not just because of the great confidence she had gained, nor the insight into being able to write a ‘repetition’ in code.

It was not just the big tick in the box marked ‘self esteem’.

It was because by doing good computing she had also done good maths. She had solved a problem that I knew would stand her in good stead in the next few months and beyond. As a remedial teacher it was a win for me, because when Melissa gets better at computing, she also gets better at maths.

Because computing is maths.

 

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