What have the Welsh done for us?
The new Curriculum for Wales states:
On first reading, this can seem to be a superfluous statement. After all, surely this has been part of the curriculum for years anyway. And then I looked up Robert Recorde, who was born in Tenby, and discovered that he had invented the equals sign.
How old were you when you found out the equals sign was invented in Wales?
Wait…what?
How is it possible that I have lived in Wales for 30 years, completed my teacher training at a Welsh university, and I have only just found out that the equals sign was invented in Wales?
Well maybe, I just hadn’t been listening.
So I started to ask around. I asked my Welsh friends who had been born and bred in Wales, attending both English and Welsh-medium schools. I asked the teachers and leaders who were attending my courses, and I asked my followers online. It was both a relief and a shock that not one of the people I asked had been aware that a Welshman had invented the equals sign.
My curiosity aroused, I decided to investigate further, to see what other mathematical contributions the Welsh had made. I was horrified to find that not only were there further major contributions by Welsh mathematicians but that often these Welsh mathematicians were erroneously recorded on the internet as being English!
So, far from being a superfluous statement, I feel that it is an essential part of the new curriculum.
But it is also quite a task for teachers to do. It is easy enough to find the names of Welsh mathematicians, but for non-mathematicians, working out what their contributions actually are can take quite a bit of research, and it then needs to be explained in a child-friendly way. How do you explain absolute differential calculus to an 8-year-old?
Introducing the mathematicians and their contributions as they naturally arise would seem to be the obvious solution so that it can be used to support understanding of mathematical concepts and conventions and certainly that is when their contributions should be studied in depth.
However, we want to make sure that all learners are aware of the contributions their country has made to the development of maths, not just those who specialise in maths, and learning about the achievements of Welsh mathematicians can inspire learners to become mathematicians themselves.
So how can teachers embed this aspect in their curriculum?
If we want to change the culture of maths, we need to celebrate it and show how it is part of everyday life. Celebrating the achievements of Welsh mathematicians is an ideal way to do this and can be an exciting way to engage parents, deepen maths learning, and create a love of maths.
In order for this to be embedded in our curriculum, it needs to be as easy as possible for teachers to deliver as well as a valuable learning experience for our children.
‘What have the Welsh done for us?’ is a monthly, whole-school resource designed to achieve this. Every month a different Welsh mathematician is celebrated with child-friendly fact files, curriculum activities, and ideas for making the most of the resource to deepen maths learning, and engage with parents and the community. The pack contains differentiated resources for learners working within progression steps 1, 2 and 3.