We are sad to announce the death of Margaret Roddick, who passed away last week after a relatively short illness. Margaret worked for CIMT from its inception at Exeter University, over 25 years ago, until her retirement just two years ago. She started as a clerical officer but over the years helped to transform CIMT form a national centre for maths teachers into an international research and development centre, coordinating our international comparative studies. She was ambitious for the work of the centre but not for herself, and was more than content to play a background role, master minding our projects. We will all miss her dearly.

PLEASE NOTE: If you want to receive orders before the summer holidays then we must receive your order form by the END OF JUNE AT THE LATEST. Otherwise, we cannot guarentee you will receive your books by the end of term.
The MEP order form can be downloaded from the link below.
http://www.cimt.org.uk/projects/mepres/ordform.pdf

This 40 day course is designed specifically for qualified secondary teachers, who are teaching some mathematics and require enhancement of their mathematical knowledge and to improve their pedagogical skills for teaching mathematics. It is free for teachers in the state sector, being funded by the TDA.
http://www.cimt.org.uk/courses/mdpt/

Due to annual leave and meetings off campus, there will be nobody available to answer phones until after next Monday. You can leave a message or, in the case of orders, you can fax us or send your order by post. Email is always a good option, contact us at feedback@cimt.org.uk

Good news, our fax machine has been successfully installed and is now working properly again. Our new fax number is 01752 585344

We apologise for the current inoperation of our fax machine. We are waiting for a new line to be put in. Hopefully this will happen in the next week. For now, you can still contact us by phone, email or post.

From 1st August 2008, CIMT will be closed in order to facilitate our relocation to Plymouth. The Centre will reopen the week beginning 25th August at its new home in the Rolle Building on the main Plymouth campus. During our closure, the CIMT website will continue to run as normal and we will still be able to respond to email. You can still post and fax correspondance to the current contact details until 20th August. After this date, post and faxes should be sent to our new contact points, which can be found on the details page here. While the Centre is closed, we will not be processing any orders unitl after our move to Plymouth.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused during this period of enforced closure and hope that our transition from Exmouth to Plymouth will as smooth as possible.

CIMT Administrator Margaret Roddick is leaving the Centre to retire today. Although Margaret does not officially finish until 31st August, she has annual leave to use up so today is her last day! Margaret has been working for the Centre since it's inception in 1986, but has been working with David Burghes since 1984. Margaret has been an integral part of all the Centre's projects over the years and will be missed by all who work with her. She will be spending her retirement busily entertaining her 3 grandchildren.

At the beginning of August 2008, CIMT, as part of the Faculty of Education, will move to the main university campus in Plymouth. The web address for CIMT will remain the same but new contact details (address, telephone, fax, personnel) will be advertised as soon as our exact location has been finalised.

Book Orders
We anticipate that this move will take some time, so we are giving notice now that orders for resources should be sent to our current address in Exmouth by 30 June, otherwise we cannot guarantee when they will be processed.

Price Rise
Another reason for ordering early is that prices will rise from 1 August 2008. Since 1998, the prices of MEP resources have remained stable but because of increases in paper, printing, storage, transportation and postage costs, we are forced to raise prices by 20% merely to break even. All the resources will still be freely available on our website.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused by the changes and will do our best to keep any disruption to a minimum.

Many of you will have noticed that the CIMT site was down for a number of days last week. This was due to a failure of our server down at the Plymouth campus. Although the site was restored in the middle of last week, we have been unable, until now, to modify the site from our end. As such this is the first opportunity we have had to apologise to all users for the down time of the site and for any inconvenience it may have caused in your teaching. The problem has now been resolved and we hope the site will be unaffected from now on.

To try and make the CIMT site easier and quicker to navigate, we have changed our home page and some of the other menus. We have also left the old layout accessible so regular users can still navigate using the old method. We hope that these minor changes will improve people's enjoyment of the site!

Are you and your department or school interested in engaging in Masters Level, free in-service training? CIMT has designed a series of Modules (at M Level), funded by the TDA (Training and Development Agency) for personal professional development (PPD) in mathematics education, primary and secondary, that can be delivered in a variety of modes. The main thrust of the modules is geared towards collaboration, either among members of a department, members of staff at a school or a collaboration between a group of schools.

For more details of the three modules that we currently run, go to http://www.cimt.org.uk/courses/tda-ppd/

These free workshops, taking place in February, will illustrate the main components of the CP model and include a practical demonstration using real pupils in a real classroom. At a time of shortages and low retention rates of mathematics teachers, the model confers responsibility and support for personal and professional development on teachers themselves and is therefore more effective and rewarding than other models of CPD.

For more details of the workshop at Sacred Heart High School, Hammersmith, click here
For more details of the workshop at St George's RC High School, Worsley, click here

Unfortunately, our Collaborative Practice workshop at Nelson Thomlinson School has been postponed due to negotiation problems between the parties involved. The event may well be rearranged so check back to the site for updates.

These free workshops, taking place at the end of March, will illustrate the main components of the CP model and include a practical demonstration using real pupils in a real classroom. At a time of shortages and low retention rates of mathematics teachers, the model confers responsibility and support for personal and professional development on teachers themselves and is therefore more effective and rewarding than other models of CPD.

For more details of the workshop at Coombe Dean School, Plymouth click here
For more details of the workshop at North Liverpool Academy, Merseyside click here

Teachers' TV have collaborated with our Hungarian colleague, Dr Tibor Szalontai, to produce a programme illustrating Mathematics teaching in schools in Hungary. The programme will be broadcast on Tuesday 20th February at 2030, with repeats likely to follow. The programme will also be available to view on the Teachers' TV website by going to www.teachers.tv, following its initial broadcast.

Following last year's successful preliminary implementation of collaborative practice within Pathfinder schools, we are now pleased to invite all schools to find out about the project and to become actively involved in collaborative practice if so desired.

CIMT has identified collaborative practice as a method to address the needs of mathematics teachers' CPD by allowing them to share and develop good practice within their department.

Further information, including an application form, relevant background literature and findings from last years' work with current Pathfinder schools, can be found at www.cimt.org.uk/projects/collaborative_practice/.
Please note that the pages above replace the old Pathfinder school pages at www.cimt.org.uk/pathfinders/

We also run a TDA funded M-Level module on collaborative practice, details of which can be found by going to www.cimt.org.uk/courses/tda-ppd/.

In addition to the interactive A-Level Pure Maths audit, we have now added interactive versions of the Statistics and Mechanics audits. Paper based versions are also still available for each of the audits.

All three audits can be accessed by going to www.cimt.org.uk/interactive/

Since the announcement of the new two-tier Mathematics GCSE commencing in September, we have had many inquiries from teachers as to whether we would be making amendments to our GCSE schemes of work and resources. We have now studied the specifications from the main exam boards for the new two-tier course and have decided NOT to change the current GCSE schemes of work or Pupil Text materials. This is because we feel that

i) The current Standard/Academic route covers the specifications for the Foundation tier and the Express/Special route covers the specifications for the Higher tier.
ii) We envisage yet further changes to the GCSE Mathematics course and will consider amendments to our resources once these changes have been confirmed.

However, we are updating all of the Practice Books with new GCSE questions as and when we require reprints of these books. The updates will also be available online. The new GCSE questions have been taken from AQA, Edexcel and OCR 2005 past papers and specimen papers for the new two tier GCSE course. The first Practice Book to be updated is the 7-12 Express/Special and should be available online by the end of the week and for purchasing by the start of September.

Newly launched is a set of resources to provide motivation for mathematics study by emphasing the practical nature of mathematics and its relevance in solving or explaining real world problems and issues.

These resources are targeted at both teachers CPD (with detailed lesson plans included) and learners (with internet based interactive versions of the worksheets).

You can find the resources at www.cimt.org.uk/resources/topical/.

We have received several emails over the past 4 months with reguard to items found on the Teaching Resources OnLine (TROL) and the Dictionary of Units sites. Both of these sites were maintained by the late Frank Tapson, whose sad passing was noted on our site. Many of the resources on these two sites were developed by Frank whilst he was working for CIMT, so we had previously listed the sites amongst our own resources.

However, we have no control or administrative access to the sites, so we are unable to change or update their content. As a result, we have moved the links from the CIMT list of resources and added them to our list of other Mathematical external web links, which can be found at www.cimt.org.uk/resources/links.

The TROL site and the Dictionary of Units are still online and are being maintained by Frank's son-in-law, Nick Leonard. The email address for contacting him is manager@cleavebooks.co.uk.

CIMT, funded by CfBT, has produced a report highlighting the findings of a project to implement a colloborative model, as used in University Practice Schools in Europe, into Intial Teacher Training Programmes within a few institutions in England.

An electronic version of the report is available from our website at www.cimt.org.uk/papers/ups_cpm.pdf

Anyone wishing to have a hard copy of the report should contact CIMT.

CIMT has been funded by CfBT to hold 3 free one-day meetings in March to disseminate and discuss the findings of a pilot University Practice School intiative in teacher training

It should be of interest to teacher trainers, ITT coordinators and teacher mentors in primary and secondary schools.

The dates of venues of the meetings are;

For more information on the content of the meetings or to book places at one of the venues click here.

We are sad to announce that our colleague, Frank Tapson, died recently. Frank was a colleague of ours for over 10 years, first working on our "Enterprising Maths" project, and later became data manager for our international Kassel project and the web manager for the CIMT website, which included many of his own puzzles, problems and calendars.

We are very much indebted to Frank for his contributions to our work, and indeed for establishing our website as a significant contribution towards enhancing and supporting mathematics teaching. We will miss him greatly and our sympathy extends to his wife and family.

CIMT has collaborated with our Hungarian colleagues to produce a list of schools in Hungary that would be willing to allow visits from teachers in this country to observe Hungarian mathematics teaching. The visits would be part of International CPD and would link into teachers own CPD in this country. The list of schools and travel details for getting to them can be found at www.cimt.org.uk/courses/tipd/

Tribal Group plc, in partnership with CIMT, has been successful in securing preferred bidder status to run the new National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM). NCETM will prove to be a valuable source of support to all mathematics teachers around the country. It is planned to have regional centres in each of the nine Government regions, as well as several hubs in each region. NCETM will be providing support via a designated web portal and an e-portfolio for each teacher, in addition to providing CPD to schools.

The official press releases about NCETM can be found at www.successforall.gov.uk/index.cfm?pg=210

CIMT is planning to launch a Collaborative Practice Model for CPD in schools and we are looking for volunteer schools who would like to be involved in the project.
For further information about the model or to apply, see www.cimt.org.uk/pathfinders/

The Centre has now made online versions of all the IPMA primary tests and several of the MEP secondary tests. Pupils can take these tests using most web browsers, and their work is immediately marked. Results are displayed at the end of the test and also submitted to our own database for research purposes.

Tests will be accessible between Monday 22 August and Friday 14 October

For more information, see http://www.cimt.org.uk/projects/meptests/testinfo.htm
To enter an access code to take a test, go to http://www.cimt.org.uk/projects/meptests/

At the beginning of August, CIMT moved to Plymouth University's Exmouth Campus, following Professor David Burghes, who has been appointed to a Professorship in Mathematics Education in the Faculty of Education.

The new website address for CIMT is http://www.cimt.org.uk/, and you can also use http://www.cimt.org.uk/ and http://www.intermep.org/ to access the site. The new CIMT telephone number is 01395 255521, and other telephone numbers and email addresses can be found on the staff contacts page.

All the CIMT website resources have been transferred to the Plymouth address above. Now that the new website is up and running, addresses beginning http://www.ex.ac.uk/cimt/ will be automatically redirected to this site. If you can't find a particular resource, you could try using the search page or you could send an email to CIMT Feedback.

We are excited about our impending move and pleased to have the opportunity to work more closely with Plymouth University's Centre for Teaching Mathematics (CTM).

A set of four monographs entitled "International Monographs on Mathematics Teaching Worldwide"
has been compiled by CIMT, and was launched at the ICME conference in Copenhagen in July 2004.

The IPMA country coordinators have contributed to the IPMA monograph and have provided lesson
clips of good practice for the accompanying DVDs, which will be invaluable in inservice and
pre-service teacher training. All the monographs and the IPMA DVDs are now available for sale.

The monographs cost £10 individually, but if you buy the full set of four the cost is £35 and
you get the two accompanying DVDs of good practice free. Payment is by cheque or credit card.

You can download the order form at http://www.cimt.org.uk/projects/ipma/monograph/orderform.pdf

More information about IPMA can be found at http://www.cimt.org.uk/projects/ipma/

An updated version of the MEP Primary general information sheet is now available online.
To view it, please use this link: http://www.cimt.org.uk/projects/mep/meppinfo.pdf

There is now a page to search for resources on the CIMT site.
It can be found at http://www.cimt.org.uk/search/

A set of four monographs entitled "International Monographs on Mathematics Teaching Worldwide"
has been compiled by CIMT, and will be launched at the ICME conference in Copenhagen in July 2004.

The IPMA country coordinators have contributed to the IPMA monograph and have provided lesson
clips of good practice for the accompanying DVDs, which will be invaluable in inservice and
pre-service teacher training. All the monographs and the IPMA DVDs will be on display during
the IPMA seminar at the conference (Monday 5th July 1930 Group Room G162 Building 210). They
will be available for sale from the publisher's stand (in Room F103 Building 116) during the week.

More information about IPMA can be found at http://www.cimt.org.uk/projects/ipma/ You can view more information about the four monographs on the conference flyer. It can be found at http://www.cimt.org.uk/projects/ipma/monograph/ICME-flyer.pdf

The main MEP and GCSE index pages have been reorganised.
New MEP Page    New GCSE Page

A new GCSE unit on the subject of proof has been added to the reorganised GCSE page.
You can view the unit directly by clicking here.

A number of additional resources have been added to the reorganised GCSE page.
Most of these are new sections or exercises for Units 10, 13 and 14 in the GCSE course.
These have been highlighted in yellow on the Teacher Support Material section of the GCSE page.