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...

This year has been a major year of discovery in me.  Play based learning has completely changed the way I think about learning and new entrants.  Learning has become flexible, individualised, fluid and firmly student driven.  Devices as something to consume have disappeared, they are only used if used to share or transform our learning.  I feel myself more relaxed, less burdened by a timetable and less bothered by the mess that play based brings. Number agents was an approach that I developed before play based learning, however it has strong correlations and similarities.  Number agents is an imaginative and playful approach that places the child in role, there is negotiation and defining of roles just as the children would do themselves.   The teacher is also in role, is an equal in the play and while the roles are strongly defined, they are also negotiated within the play.  Basically when children step back into agency, they step back into the pla...

I can't say enough about how much using visual images has strengthened agency this year.  The questioning skills and problem posing skills of children have increased hugely.  They are brilliant for helping children to see maths in the world around them. I love what this has added to my programme so much I have put a set of 23 photos together that I think will work beautifully for anyone trying my approach. I have added it to my TPT store here. What questions can you pose from this picture for further investigation?

I have put together a pack of my favourite maths games.  These all use everyday classroom materials and are based on strengthening number sense. I have them for sale in my TPT store and they can be found here. This is an example of one of the games...all based on cool games that I have modified and used over time.

A lot of the games I use through agency come out of my head and just grow and morph and change.  If you are after some ideas I have put together a very small pack of games here.

My approach to mathex in number agency has been inspired by a senior version I used to use with older children. Usually as the agents get more independent and better at working in multi-level group I will add the challenge of mathex. This approach is usually introduced by the brain drainer (who as yet does not have a puppet form...just me in role as yet)  I am on the search for a brain drainer - or perhaps a riddler to take on this role. Mathex is quick and once agents get used to the approach it flows beautifully.  I design the sheets to complement the problems the agents have encountered during the week.  It is great for some just in time teaching as you see the common gaps each group has. This approach is also brilliant for developing team work, growth mindset and comprehension. I have been working on creating a set to go along with my number agent book.  At this time of the year it can be incredibly hard, however have designed a starter set with two mathex s...

During Maths PLD this year we came across an approach called maths eyes.  The website can be found here I am a massive fan of Jo Boaler and love her work.  So this idea of maths eyes linked in beautifully with the research I had done. I absolutely can not take credit for this idea, but it has had lovely spin off effects for agency. This year I have used maths eyes separately from agency, just as quick activity that can help to develop children's visual problem solving.  I have been giving some thought to how it will work in agency, but did not want to implement it till I had a full handle on how it could work. Quotes from Jo Boaler's work on visual maths I love.... Visual mathematics is an important part of mathematics for its own sake and new brain research tells us that visual mathematics even helps students learn numerical mathematics. - Mathematics is a subject that allows for precise thinking, but when that precise thinking is combined with creativity, ope...

This is cowgirl calculation, I am excited for her to arrive from Amazon as I have big plans for her.  Rather than be a villain this puppet is destined to be a professor.  She will help us to nut out solutions to problems and help us to understand strategies by reinforcing the talk moves.  I find the puppets are such a great hook for children and really engages them in the process.   The talk moves image below is not mine, just popping it there for anyone not quite up with what the talk moves are.

Number agents was a germ of an idea that grew in my head after a Mantle of the Expert summer school in 2014. I have always loved teaching maths, but had the usual issues of those children who felt they couldn't do it, found it hard and became disengaged. The emphasis on imagination, play, creativity and drama in Mantle of the Expert really resonated with me, and I started thinking about its possibilities in maths. I had a go in 2014 and found that children immediately responded.  It was a little clunky as anything is when you start out, but it worked and worked well. During 2015 we worked hard on our problem solving approach to maths, this fitted beautifully with number agents as children as agents are charged with solving problems to defeat the villains. This year in 2016 I took the props and villains one step further and created files, and established character descriptions of specific villains that related to a mathematical operation.  These have added to the 'dra...