Yeah, but who invented maths? .. was one of my favourite questions this week. I’m not sure whether the student was just a little bored and wanted a diverting chat, or whether there was a genuine interest. Either way it did get me thinking about who invented maths. Here’s what probably happened: A long time ago there lived a boy with an unpronounceable name. So we’ll call … [Read more...]
Help, my child is too young for school!
Help - my child's too young for school! My daughters first day at school was a bit of a shock - not for her - but for me. To see all these littlies running around, brimming with excitement and anticipation, excitedly anticipating the many years of schooling ahead, barely acknowledging proud parents as they rushed into the joys of academia…. Not really. If your child's … [Read more...]
English vocabulary – Is 14000 words enough?
According to languagemonitor.com, the English vocabulary language incorporated its one millionth word - "Web 2.0" - at 10.22am June 10th 2009. This website tracks English vocabulary and acknowledges new words after they have been used 25,000 times on, predominately, social networking sites. Other contenders for the millionth word title include cloud computing, carbon neutral … [Read more...]
Rip up those textbooks for maths confidence!
There is a scene in the Robin Williams film "Dead Poets Society" when he encourages the students to rip out the introductory pages of a poetry book. The general point is that they should be thinking for themselves and not using a graph to rate the poems effectiveness. I'm definitely not of the opinion that we should all be ripping pages out of books, but I do feel that … [Read more...]
How to get 100% in maths – next time
It seems to be that every parent and teacher wants their child to get 100%. I understand this - it's very important to aim to get every question correct. There are two concerns: it's demotivating when the child doesn't get full marks, and there is little opportunity to try again. It's a little old fashioned to talk about practice making perfect but, at least in maths, there … [Read more...]