Number Agents

This year I plan to post about my journey in agency, how I get ready, how I hook the children in, what it looks like in the setting up phase and then the successes and challenges I have throughout the year. I thought this may be useful for teachers starting out with this approach, however it is also very useful as professional reflection for myself. Firstly as we begin the year, on this the first day of 2017 I ask this challenge question for myself and all teachers: -Where are the children in what you are teaching?  Where is their voice, their say, their agency?  Where is the playfulness, the creativity, the imagination...the fun?  If you were a child taking part in this 'lesson' would YOU be engaged? I intend to check myself with these questions each time I sit down to 'teach'...my belief is that the narrowing of the curriculum (which is an absolutely amazing curriculum if used as intended) has led to children being thrown out of the curriculum.  It is my ab...

I have always been a lover of puppets.  I remember going to the Winter show and seeing the puppets for sale, I loved them, they inspired such creativity....they now do the same in my play based classroom. I'm no drama expert, but give me a puppet and suddenly I can hold a floor.  It is the same for children, often the most quiet of children will suddenly come alive and grow in confidence when talking through a puppet.  There is something about a puppet that gives you freedom to be who and what you want to be, to speak in a voice that is not your own and to speak with confidence. Through puppets, children feel empowered to speak and behave on behalf of the character they are portraying. Children can pick up a puppet, begin speaking in a different voice, and quickly adopt the personality of the character they are portraying. (Often this personality is very different from his or her own). Children can also take part in performances in which the teacher acts as narrator, ...

For those that have used a Mantle of the Expert approach you will understand why adding an outside or external client works so well. The clients role in agency is to alert us to some sort of havoc that is going on in their workplace.  This havoc will directly relate to a villain.  We must then work out who this villain is and when we do, we will have a chance to hear the problem. This external client takes the job of setting a deadline or purpose away from the teacher and gives it to this imaginary client.  The problem that they have recognised in their workplace hooks us in to the need for problem solving and gives us a commission.  The villain then steps in to provide some tension to the story.  In fact it is very much like a good story, a beginning, middle and end and within that there is a problem, climax to the story and resolution. While the client and villain may be completely imagined, they give a very authentic purpose to the maths for the childre...