In terms of personal impact of the trip, among the many lessons I got to observe in the school was a Year 12 Maths lesson. It was a fantastic opportunity to see how the content was delivered and how the students were receptive to the material. The lack of resources available to the teacher did not diminish from the learning of the students in the room and it was fascinating to see how the students accepted that if they did not understand the work in the lesson then it was up to them to ensure that they did in time for the next lesson. It was also reminded me that Maths is the same all over the world and the language barrier became almost non-existent as the language of the classroom became more “mathematical”.
As a department, we have benefited because main school students are now talking about a post-16 Maths trip visiting Italy. Despite our best efforts, students still seem to think that Maths only exists in the classroom and this has been a good opportunity to talk to the students about how different branches of Maths are used in everyday life and how this is the same all over the world. Since our return, all of my classes have asked what has Maths got to do with the project and it has been nice to be able to explain to them about how Maths is used. Unfortunately, we have not found the time in our curriculum to look at the topic of migration in any great detail but it is an area we may look at when we redesign our schemes of work and start to include more investigative tasks.
As an aside, we have just received the results from the January modular exam that our Year 12 students took. All four students who went to Italy achieved a grade A! Either we selected the correct students for the trip or it could be argued that trip encouraged the students to work harder!
