I have to admit when I was told that we were getting Hegarty Maths and we all had to do it, I was a little resistant. Initial thoughts were, not another thing I have to do! I already do so much! I will also fight tooth and nail to protect my learners from additional work too. I was not on board with this new Hegarty Maths! After speaking to Mr Hegarty himself, I began to see the benefit for the learner and for me. This blog post is about Hegarty but it can be about any platform that marks student work, you will see!
When I started teaching we set all student homework on My Maths. It was great they did a little online worksheet, it told me who got the highest so that I could give them a good comment on SIMS, and who didn’t do it on time so that I could give them a bad comment on SIMS, and those that didn’t do very well on it. These learners would either have taken less than 2 mintues to complete or they were genuinely struggling and you could pick this up with them in class. It was great, no books to mark on the weekend at home! Perfect!
Hegarty Maths can be used in a similar way. Learners log in, see the tasks that I have set them, watch a video to explain the topic to them and attempt a quiz on the topic. It gives them a mark, I can view the class as a whole, see who has done it, who hasn’t, how long they spent doing it and so on. I still don’t have any books to mark at home! Perfect!
Yet as I have progressed through my career I have realised that these platforms have the opportunity to provide so much more! The benefit for the learner is that instant gratification from getting it correct. The opportunity for them to further research the topic by going to the video before or after to either re-cover the basics or extend their knowledge. A bank of videos for all topics so if they want to pre-teach themselves something they think they may struggle with is a great tool as well.
The benefit to me is that I don’t have lots of marking, but I do have lots of opportunities for feedback! For me, my purpose is to have an active dialogue with my learners, to engage and enthuse them. See my post on feedback. Hegarty Maths is great for promoting an active dialogue. Learners can leave me comments as they progress through tasks. One student left me 57 comments one week. I read every single one. I will give you a small flavour of what she wrote:
“Don’t get this”
“I tried to put 5 but it wouldn’t let me”
“I see I should have times it first”
“Think I know where I went wrong”
“Nope not getting it”
I like this as an example because as a teacher I can see what she went on during the task. She had to overcome that initial frustration at the task, then she followed some of it, still getting it wrong. Then she lost it again. I can respond to each of these comments individually or as an overall feedback. Ultimately what I want to say to her is well done for getting stuck in, it must have been hard. I want to say well done for keeping going even though she was getting it wrong. I want to spend some time with her going over it again to show her where she went wrong. I want to set her the previous topic as a refresher before she comes back in and we go over this task again together in class. This was my reply:
“Wow! What a journey you went on, well done for sticking with it! I think we need to take another look at this together to make sure we have it solidly in our memory bank. Can you take a look at task 87 (I have set it for you now) then bring your notes in for this and task 87 and we can go back over it together. Thank you for giving 100% to this”
Yes it is brilliant that Hegarty Maths and other online platforms take away the tick and flick element for me but time saving they are not. Nor should they be, it is our job to educate and converse with learners and help shape their learning together through an active dialogue.
