Wyndham maths is back in the news with subject Lead Nicol Winfield winning a £15,000 grant to share brilliant teaching practice across Derby.
The Let Teachers SHINE awards make annual awards designed to help discover and share innovative methods of teaching that inspire children to succeed.
Ran by the education charity SHINE, the awards offer funding to teachers who have brilliant ideas to help disadvantaged children succeed in English, maths or science.
Previous Let Teachers SHINE winners have gone on to receive international acclaim. Maths practitioner Colin Hegarty launched the national maths platform HegartyMaths with the help of the Let Teachers SHINE competition.
Nicol was one of just 14 finalists selected in 2018, having been nominated for setting up maths masterclass sessions for parents. A previous runner up in the TES , second only to colleague Michelle Garton and aged just 25 years old, Nicol has developed a national reputation for her innovative maths teaching and research practice.
Recognising that many students find it difficult to engage with maths, Nicol carried out research which established that many parents themselves lack the confidence with numeracy to support their children’s learning.
Nicol’s SHINE award money will be used to offer parents catch-up sessions on key maths skills and to understand how maths is taught in school. It is hoped that the programme will give parents the knowledge and confidence to support their children at home.
As part of the project, Nicol will create a ‘train the trainer’ programme to support teachers to implement their own version of the programme. The programme will run across Derby with the hope to see mums and dads back in school – and loving learning maths – from September.
Nicol said “To be able to roll out a programme that will engage parents of our most disadvantaged children, improving their attitudes towards maths and hopefully supporting them in their own aspirations, is a dream come true.
After years of teachers fighting to reject the idea that a large proportion of our children ‘just can’t do maths’, we are starting to persuade parents that their children can love numbers and that they can love numbers too! Together we are building ‘I can’ maths culture.”
For more information on the charity, please visit www.shinetrust.org.uk/lts2018