February 23rd, 2009
I’d heard there was some kind of film awards event in America over the weekend (The Olivers, The Oreos, The Otters?).
Slumdog maths?
And whilst I don’t really keep up to date with hip young swingers like Sophia Loren and Ben Kingsley (concerning myself instead with matters maths tutoring), I do like to keep a toe in the cultural waters, to so speak. To this end, I’ve found a blog that combines the silver screen and the squeaky whiteboard in the shape of ‘Maths teacher goes to the movies’.
The language isn’t always suitable for the youngest Whizzers, but the blog is witty and irreverent, combining movie review and maths analysis in regular posts. Here’s the teacher’s take on some bad maths teaching in new release Doubt:
Yes folks, what we have here is a clear transgression of Maths Teacher’s (hitherto secret) First Rule of Movie Mathematics: Thou Shalt Do The Math. Clearly Sister Amy has been at the communion wine when she should have been revising her knowledge of basic fractions, and a better movie would surely have seen the eagle-eyed Ms Streep getting all righteous on Ms Adam’s ass for her shortcomings in matters arithmetic. PSH could still have been around, going on about Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems, if he was keen to be seen as “trendy” - and you just know a dedicated actor like him would go off and study the subject for a good few months, just to get the part right.
Talk about a missed opportunity!
I’ll be checking in back in with the moviegoing maths teacher soon.
Tags: teachers, video
Posted in Fun, Maths | No Comments »
February 17th, 2009
More good news from the Maths-Whizz front line last month. Bella Carnell, at Jumeirah English Speaking School (JESS) in Dubai, scooped two awards for her incredible progress with our Maths tutor:
1. Most improved Year 6 Maths-Whizz student
2. The ‘Achiever Award’ for getting into the Maths-Whizz World Top ten.
A quick gander at Bella’s Whizz stats reveals just how well she has done. In the 84 days since she started work on Maths-Whizz Bella has accrued 12884 credits. That’s over 150 credits every day (including weekends)! No wonder she made it into the Whizz leaderboard so fast.
If you’re a Whizzer and you’re angling to get on the leaderboard, remember that you can earn credits in Replay as well as in Tutor mode - it pays to revise with Maths-Whizz!
Here’s Bella receiving her hard-earned awards from Dave Turner, of UKS, our partners in the UAE.
Bella Carnell - Maths-Whizz!
Bella wasn’t the only award-winner. Here’s the roll-call of JESS’s most-improved Maths-Whizzers in years 1 to 5:
Laith Al Nabhani (Year 1)
Sadiq Abdul Gahni (Year 2)
Archie Warner (Year 3)
Serena Gokal (Year 4)
Micheal Rea (Year 5)
Posted in Kids, Maths, News, Tutoring | No Comments »
February 13th, 2009
Maths-Whizz has made it to the Channel Islands. Alderney, northernmost of the Channel islands, is home to a people nicknamed ‘vaques’ (cows) and ‘lapins’ (rabbits), and home also to the small, but forward-thinking, Ormer House Preparatory School.
Vaques and lapins do Maths-Whizz
Ormer House is one of the smallest schools on our books, but it’s testament (we hope!) to the quality of Maths-Whizz that they’ve opted to invest in our Maths-Whizz Tutoring for Schools service, and convinced the generous people behind Trover Coats (purveyors of all-weather coats to classy canines) to stump up the cash. They’ve even gone as far as to write about it in the local newspaper, and we’ve copied their article below.
A Big thanks to Ormer House for giving us some local recognition, and if Whizz had a doggy mascot, he’d be wearing a burgundy red Bone Dry.
Bone Dry!
Read on for the whole article.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: maths-whizz, schools
Posted in News, Press & Feedback, Teachers' Resource | 2 Comments »
February 2nd, 2009
Widely covered on this snowy (at least for London and SE England Whizzers) Monday, is the story of Carol Vorderman’s appointment to a Conservative party panel to tackle UK maths education (and address the parlous state many claim it to be in).
Carol will take an unpaid role at the head of the Tory taskforce, with the remit of helping “break the cycle of fear of maths”. As we know well, take away the fear of maths, and the number paralysis that comes with it, and you remove one of the major obstacles to numeracy.
Many of our parents claim that the single finest thing our maths tutoring has done for their students is improve confidence. No student will remember everything he or she is taught, but what stays with them is a general attitude towards maths, and an appreciation that even the most complex maths problems can be broken down into easier parts. Too many adults claim they are no good at maths because they simply didn’t enjoy it at school, rather than because they are actually no good.
Vorderman has claimed that the last ten years has seen 3.5 million children leave school without basic maths qualifications, and despite recent good news about England’s placing in international league tables, there is clearly a lot more to be done. We hope Ms Vorderman finds time to recommend Maths-Whizz.
It’s just a thought….
Tags: politics
Posted in Maths, News, News & Research, Tutoring | No Comments »
