Teaching since 2004, I’m currently the Senior Lead Practitioner for Maths at the Ormiston Academies Trust and lead of the OAT Maths project: a coherent, resourced five-year curriculum for Key Stages 3 and 4 mathematics. Alongside the day job, I sit on the council of the Mathematical Association and the Subject Expert Group for mathematics for the Oak National Academy and am a PhD student at Loughborough University researching mathematical cognition and a member of the Mathematical Cognition and Learning Society.
If you are interested in improving your maths teaching (and let’s face it, who isn’t?), take a look at my book, published in 2018 – How to Enhance Your Maths Subject Knowledge: Number and Algebra for Secondary Teachers. The inimitable Anne Watson reviewed it here and said, “I wish I had started my teaching with this book.”
I write and review content for education publishers. In recent years this has taken the form of writing revision workbooks and textbooks, teacher guides for textbooks, assessments and content for online systems, materials for training courses and reviewing other authors’ work. If you would like to discuss how I could help you, please get in touch via jemmaths@gmail.com.
I was a Silver Pearson Teaching Award winner in 2015 for Teacher of the Year in a Secondary School and have spoken at a number of national conferences, including MathsConf and ResearchED.
As an NCETM Accredited PD Lead (A-Level) I love training teachers. My courses include subject knowledge, pedagogy and using technology, and training non-specialists to teach mathematics. The latter has included teaching the DfE-funded Teacher Subject Specialism Training (TSST) for a number of years and Subject Knowledge Enhancement (SKE) with LaSalle Education.
As a teacher, I love to find better ways to demonstrate things, and enjoy spending time making models with Desmos and Geogebra. I am a total graph-nerd, “a graph is better than a thousand words,” as someone important must have once said.
I tweet as @jemmaths. Anything I write is down to me, nothing to do with any employers, and subject to change at my whim. Listed below are articles and podcasts on other sites. I keep these listed here mainly as a way of me keeping track. If you want to get in touch with me to chat about maths or education, Twitter is a good place to start or you can email me at jemmaths@gmail.com.
Books
How to Enhance Your Maths Subject Knowledge: Number and Algebra for Secondary Teachers (2018)
Oxford Revise: GCSE Maths Revision Workbooks (2020)
Never Stop Learning (chapter) in If I Could Tell You One Thing (Southall, ed., 2022)
Succeeding as a maths teacher (Kennedy, Meek, Weston & Sherwood, 2023)
Mosaic Key Stage 3 Mathematics (2023)
And more tbc…
Articles and Guest Posts
I have written for the TES.
I have written some articles for Teachwire online:
It’s Time to Stop Treating Mastery With Derision and Start Paying Attention
‘x’ Marks the Spot: How To Get Algebra Right From the Get-Go
Those who suggest scrapping wrote learning are missing something
And some in the print edition of Teach Secondary:
Dyscalculia, anxiety, motivation
Making Maths Better
Building Up
What Lessons Did We Learn From This Year’s Maths GCSEs?
I have some articles online and in print for SecEd magazine:
Designing Your Subject’s Curriculum
Teaching With Memory in Mind
New Approaches to Student Feedback
I also have some guest posts on other sites, including:
The Learning Scientists: Building Effective Learning Strategies into a Mathematics Curriculum
OUP: A Little Advice for NQTs
Complete Maths: Assessment and feedback: making it work for everyone involved
OUP: Insights from the 2019 GCSE papers
OUP: Transition from Y6 to Y7 in 2020
OUP: Transition from Y10 to Y11 in 2020
My post on language and vocabulary in maths lessons was featured by NACE in Feb 2022:
The importance of language in mathematics
Podcasts and Videos
I have been lucky enough to be on Craig Barton’s Mr Barton Maths podcast thrice (I love that word). The first was a conference takeaways episode from ResearchED Rugby in 2018, the second was an interview covering lesson planning, cutting out the fluff, the importance of silence, and an unusual perception of numbers. The third was a discussion before returning to school after Covid-19 lockdowns in August 2020, including plans for the strangest of returns to school and general advice to heads of department.
I was on the first episode of the NCETM podcast in 2017, discussing entrance requirements for A Level Maths.
In May 2020 I took part in a discussion on teaching maths on Atul Rana’s MathsChatLive, with Naveen Rizvi, Dani Quinn and Mark McCourt.
In April 2021 I discussed fractions, decimals, percentages and ratio for Peter Mattock’s YouTube channel.
November 2021 brought a chat with Ben Gordon on Bags 2 Learn, on curriculum, consistency and autonomy.
My video, Probability in School is on the Loughborough University Mathematics Education Network.
In March 2022 I got involved with Craig Barton’s Tips for Teachers project.
Conferences & Training
I regularly speak at conferences on maths education and I deliver professional development to schools on maths and general pedagogy.
Some of my popular recent conference talks have included Banishing BIDMAS, The Primacy of the Primes, The Science of Learning in Maths and Doing Feedback Better.
In-person and remote training covers (maths-focused) topics such as effective questioning, formative assessment, adaptive teaching, structuring sequences of learning, problem solving, teaching with algebra tiles and double-sided counters, curriculum development, leading a department and much more.
If you would like to book me to speak or deliver training, get in touch.
The World Is Maths 