Curious Minds

Following its last inspection, Ofsted suggested that Wallasey should make maths lessons more creative by engaging pupils in an enterprise initiative.A Year 7 pupil panel also indentified that maths needed 'an injection of creativity'. Pupils decided they would like to link the enterprise initiative to the annual 'Culture Week', under the theme of India. 'A Passage to India' was born: a cross-curricular, inter-cultural maths project. The objec-tives were to improve pupils' problem solving skills in maths and for staff to allow them todevelop their personal learning and thinking skills.I

With the support of practitioners pupils identified several areas that could be successful enterprises linked to the theme of India:? Making Indian crafts using maths: tessellations (printed onto t-shirts), stitchingparabolas linked with India and sacred geometry.? Production of a DVD to sell parents as a souvenir at 'Culture Week CelebrationEvening'. This showed them working solo and in teams making the crafts. Pupilspresented and promoted the DVD at a performance attended by parents, takingorders for sales. This part of the project involved pupils in maths In a variety of ways:general arithmetic, basic algebra, handling data, shape and space.? They also created a scale version of a journey to India which included some off site learning in the local area.

• The impact on pupils' achievement in problem solving skills in maths was evident in their 'student booklets', where they have laid out plans and solutions to creating a scale 'journey to India' and for costing the production of the DVD

• Year 7 lesson observations found evidence of more risk taking by pupils, withteachers confirming increased initiative.? Communication skills improved, with ownership of learning leading to increasedconfidence and engagement. A focus group evaluation on 'hot and cold creativityspots' showed that pupils had found maths particularly exciting this year.

• Observation has shown an increase in risk taking by staff. One teacher said she talked less in class, finding students were taking more from a lesson and planning was more manageable

• Staff attendance at voluntary residentials aimed at increasing confidence and risk tak-ing has been excellent and the language of staff has changed to reflect new knowl-edge about creativity and personal learning and thinking skills.

• Parents were enthused by pupils' presentation of the 'Passage to India' project and the DVD and many of them ordered DVDs.

• Wallasey will continue to co-plan, deliver and evaluate projects with pupils,disseminating the practice from the maths project across all curriculum areas. Staffwere surprised by the success of the approach commenting that they were amazed atthe young people's willingness to contribute and the quality of their ideas.

• Staff are now better prepared to take risks and allow the more active involvement of pupils, having recognised how this has enhanced learning.

• During Year1 the school ran an 'Aspiring Leaders' project for staff; they now wish to focus on the leadership skills of pupils.