Our recent starter to the Secondary Mastery Specialist Programme.
Jess Sands has recently started on the Teaching for Mastery Programme. She is in cohort 4 of our Secondary Teaching for Mastery Specialists. Read on to find out what inspired Jess to take on the role of Mastery Specialist:
I have been teaching maths for 3 years working in a few different roles including teaching English in South Korea. I’m currently a secondary maths teacher at Bingley Grammar School. I love all elements of maths, but if I had to pick a topic area as my favourite, it would be geometry.
I recently started the Secondary Mastery Specialist Programme in cohort 4 after finding out about it on the NCETM website. My interest in mastery really took off when I was involved in the ICCAMS project, which is an academic study involving teaching using multiple visual representations and making connections between topics in order to raise students’ attainment. This left me wanting to develop my teaching further in this direction and the mastery programme was the perfect opportunity for this.
I have thoroughly enjoyed learning about the five big ideas of mastery through the residentials, and putting them into practice in my classroom. I have started to write variation-style questions and using visual representations, which has helped students at all levels understand maths more deeply. Collaborative planning with other specialists, opportunities to watch secondary specialists teach, and visits to primary classrooms have all been really valuable in helping develop my teaching. However, my favourite part of the course so far has been learning how to use concrete manipulatives like algebra tiles and geoboards, which was surprisingly loads of fun!
Click here to meet Ben, another recent starter to the Mastery Specialist Programme