Background
Plumstead High School is located within Plumstead, one of Cape Town’s Southern suburbs. The school blog states that the school
was founded in 1958, and thus has seen more than fifty years of existence and service. Originally it was very much a local community school, but now it serves learners from different areas. The School has always drawn learners from very diverse socio-economic backgrounds with a wide range of academic abilities.
The statistics about the school, taken from the Western Cape Education Department’s website, are provided below (click on the image).
In 2014 the school had just under 1000 learners on roll. It appears that all (or almost all) learners have English as their home language. In Grade 12, the numbers for mathematics and mathematical literacy were about the same, and in Grades 10 and 11, the numbers for mathematics were higher than for mathematical literacy.
What’s happened so far ….
We visited the school on 3rd December 2014 and met with Ms Salie, Mrs Stevens and Mrs Dass (acting Principal). It was agreed that Ms Salie and Ms Stevens would talk to the head of the mathematics department and to their other mathematics colleagues before making a final decision about the level of their commitment in the research project. After discussing it with her colleagues, Ms Salie agreed to take part in the project.
Ms Salie taught an ordinary lesson on 6th March, on the topic of the number system, to her Grade 9 class. We took observation notes and produced a report on the lesson. Ms Salie was given the report and invited to comment, but it seems she was happy with the report.
She taught the research lesson on exponents on 18th March. She did not complete the lesson and planned to continue with it in a subsequent lesson. We have produced a report on the lesson and shared it with her.