Learning & Teaching News

Maths night with Michael Ymer

Last Wednesday evening, Mick Ymer ran our Maths Parent Workshop, which was hands on and interactive. We are grateful for the large turnout of families who were available to attend the session. With a focus on family engagement here at OHR it is important that you, as parents of our wonderful students, are equipped with the knowledge and tools to support learning at home and have an understanding of how engaging and powerful learning happens at school.

He shared with everyone some games and how these activities help the students learn mathematics that is targeted to their point of need. It was illustrated through playing the game how we at OHR extend or support our students depending on the level of understanding of each individual.

Some take away points for everyone present included:

The wrong impression is often held about being fast at mathematics=good at maths however, a focus on strategies is more effective. An article is linked here that shares the knowledge behind this if you have time for some reading and examples.
Don’t expect children to have the clarity of life/maths that we have now as an adult. Maths knowledge is built across life experience and we as parents and educators support this journey to explicit teaching, building context into our lessons, and building a growth mindset when things are challenging.
His final message to families was that errors made are not mistakes- it is important to look at what a child can do and celebrate that rather than what they do not/cannot do. A video that shares some insights into this is linked here.

Parent reflections of the night…

Michael’s views on numeracy versus what I was taught as “maths” was eye-opening. I certainly can’t remember any of the complex formulas to get to a precise answer (or even how to do long division) but I do use the strategies he mentioned, such as estimation and rounding, all the time. I also liked the games and practical examples of real world numeracy he gave. I will be stealing his tip on having everything set up and ready to go before explaining what to do for a task – it might even make an appearance at work!

~ Luke Torpey

Thanks for organising the maths evening. We had heard really good things about the talk Michael Ymer had previously given at OHR. As a result, both Dinesh and myself wanted to attend the Maths Information Evening. Michael was incredibly engaging and helpful- emphasising the importance of knowing the basics and the practical application of numbers rather than just memorising algorithms. Michael's advice on using games and everyday activities to make maths fun and relatable was particularly valuable. We especially enjoyed some healthy competition with other parents and trying out some of the games ourselves on the night! It made the lessons all the more valuable as we could experience first-hand what Michael was trying to explain - and it made sense!

Overall, it was an insightful session that left us better equipped to support our children's learning. I hope you are able to have him attend again in the future as I think it would be really useful for other parents who could not attend this session. We would highly recommend it to other parents!

~ Roshi and Dinesh

Michael was so very engaging! His passion for children not just embracing maths but not being fearful of it was just great to hear – and a really good message for us!

It really resonated with me when he said that parents often think that understanding bigger numbers will make their children smart but that’s untrue, they just need to know everything they can about the little numbers. It’s so true that when we have bigger numbers, we use calculators, and so will our children. I also really liked the calculator games we can play with them – that still allow them to think!

It was a great evening and a bonus to get to play games and take them home to play with our children.

Thanks so much for organising the evening – really valuable!

~ Jane Taylor

Penny Hansen

Mathematics Leader