 weebecka:The SPMG Scottish Maths program was introduced in the late 70s.
ah....primary maths. One of my lecturers/tutors was one of the writers of SPMG (JB - he was superb and my very favourite tutor) - I think he'd be intrigued to see it described as a 'teach yourself' scheme. I also taught SPMG for the first ten years or so of my career and I'm intrigued to see it described as "teach yourself". (went on to use a mix of Heinemman and Teejay) weebecka: Dragging them out is probably not much use to you
Probably not since I'm teaching in secondary now - although teaching, as I do, the challenging class most of the pupils are very much still at primary levels. weebecka: ohn says it's a struggle to make them work as stand alone books as they were written as a self contained scheme. https://www.ncetm.org.uk/community/thread/74409
That's not quite what he said though, is it. "Kids find them really tough as they are all just sit down and get on with it maths." I'd disagree. They shouldn't find them tough at all since the idea is that the teacher teaches first and the textbook/workbook/worksheet (all part of the scheme) is a follow up to that. No primary child is expected to teach themselves maths (or any other subject for that matter). I'd consider it to be very poor teaching indeed if a child was expected to sit down and get on with it - by the time they're doing the text book they ought to be relatively competent in what they're being asked to do (although using the text book could also be part of a teacher's range of assessment tools in order to see what stage of competence the child has reached). In SEBD when I taught challenging pupils the pupils were often unable to move on as they had a range of learning problems as well as being challenging. For that reason we'd often move sideways - teach using one scheme then moving sideways to the same topic in another scheme, which worked perfectly well so long as the teacher had done their job and actually taught them. I suspect that part of your misunderstanding of Scottish primary maths teaching is as a result of considering it from the perspective of a pupil. weebecka: And of course they were useful where there was a lack of specialist maths teachers.
You seem to be muddying the waters here - are you still discussing primary maths where it would be, at the very least, unusual to have specialist maths teachers or secondary where (in Scotland) all maths teachers are maths degree (or closely related subject) level specialists? A further question.... What is the relevence to the rest of the discussion of infant and primary maths schemes?
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