Y2 Problem Solving Day 2015

June 29, 2015, 3:18 pm

≫ Next: Intro to Indices (Starter task/ideau)

Last week, on Wednesday, I hosted my school's Y2 Problem Solving Day event for 7 of our local primary schools. In all we had around 40 students from our primaries in for a carousel of Mathematical activities. I planned the day based on the success of last year's event and here's how the day went...

To see last year's Y2 Problem Solving blog post, click here.

Like last year there were a number of 'bases' with tasks for students to move around in ascending order. Now, as we had more schools attend this year I had to add in a few 'bases'. This meant that the 7 schools all had something to be doing for each of the 5 sessions scheduled during the day. Each school completed 5 of the 7 'bases' throughout the day and then there was a 'Team Challenge' right at the end.

Base 1:

Same as last year - a 4 operations tarsia puzzle. The schools found this generally quite challenging and didn't have enough time to piece the jigsaw together. Once completed the numbers around the outside added to..guess what...27!

Base 2:

Same as last year - the magic square task. students had two sets of 9 numbered tiles; an 'easier' set and a 'harder' set. Their task was to put the 9 tiles into a 3 by 3 square so that each row, column and diagonal added to the same amount. The 'easier' set's answer was 16 and the 'harder' 99.
The accompanying teachers from our primaries enjoyed this one as at first they struggled to do the 'easier' set. Strangely the 'harder' set was completed more so than the 'easier' one.

Base 3:

Return of my awesome Frogs! Thanks to Carol (Mrs Murphy) for these once again.
Students had to find the minimum number of moves needed to swap over the differently coloured frogs. One of my extremely enthusiastic Y8 helpers was bound to this 'base' and asked the students to then see how many moves only 2 frogs on each side would need and then got them to estimate how many 4 frogs would need. She was great at engaging the Y2 kids in this and made it into a competition within the schools that visited this task.

Base 4:

New for 2015!
The Mathematical Egg Hunt! Thanks to some last minute help from my HLTA (Thanks Jane) I managed to scatter around 50 plastic eggs around the two rooms I used for the Problem Solving Day. Each egg had a question in it for students to answer. All they had to do was find 7 eggs and then answer the question inside on their answer sheet. Their answer sheet was given to them on arrival to our school. For this task they had to write the question and answer on the sheet so I knew which question had been attempted when marking answers.

Base 5:

Same as last year - pentominoes
Students had to arrange the 12 pentominoes into a 6 by 10 rectangle. A tricky one this one. Another of my Y8 helpers was really good here at providing hints to schools as they worked on the task. At times, he would show them a correctly placed pentominoe and get them to carry on from there. Side note: I gave all my Y8 helpers (of which there were 10) an answer pack so they were all able to prompt/help out the Y2 students on the tasks.

Base 6:

Stolen from my Y6 Problem Solving Day...The Marshmallow Challenge!
As it goes down so well at the Y6 day I decided to include it here. I had 2 of my Y8 helpers here to help provide the necessary resources to the schools as they began the task. I roamed around the two rooms but would always see how this one was progressing as they all found it tricky as the spaghetti breaks so easily - I hinted at backing a triangular base (stuck to the table) and going from here to make a pyramid (tetrahedron). One school did similarly with a square...

This school also won the whole day!

Base 7:

Also NEW for 2015:
Mathematical Balloons. Hidden around the two rooms we used were 5 sets of 5 differently coloured balloons. On each balloon I had written a question for students to answer. However, you couldn't answer the question without blowing the balloon up first. So students found the balloons on a little 'treasure hunt' around the rooms, blew up the balloons, read the question, answered it and then put this on their answer sheet.

The Team Challenge:

This was the same as last year too...The Cocktail Stick/Midget Gem Bridge challenge (for want of a better name).
The schools all took part in this challenge at the same time. They had a pack of 100 cocktail sticks and a bag of midget gems and had to create the best bridge they could that would allow a 10 stack of multilink cubes to pass underneath. I got our Resource Manager to judge the bridges based on: structure, stability, design and adherence to the given criteria (free standing, multilink stack has to pass under).
Here are some of the bridges that were made...

The winning bridge!! With a little help from my Y8 helpers!

The day ran very well with all schools seemingly enjoying their day at 'big school'. It was a hot day and so the students were given a couple of breaks in the day (at different times to our usual school day: I was off timetable and covered). They went outside at one point and played on our flagpole area at the front of the school, which they enjoyed.
The day came to a close when I had totalled up the scores and announced the winners. Every student that participated received a certificate and chose between a pen with our school's logo/name on it or a little 'book bug' to take back with them as a memento (hopefully they'll remember us when it comes to them choosing their secondary school)! The winners each received a small gift, which was a 'Minions' wristband and lolly - these went down very well!

These days are a lot of hard work to organise and run, but are so worth it. The links we have with our local feeder schools are stronger as a result of it and I've heard lovely comments already from our community by friends of colleagues, etc. I wasn't without help when organising the day either and have to thank Jo, our faculty assistant for liaising with our primaries throughout, getting names and details. She printed and made all the certificates and name badges, contacted the office etc at our school to inform them all of the day taking place, arranged the refreshments and so so much more that I'm probably not aware of. So...THANK YOU JO!! I also need to comment on how fantastic and enthusiastic our Y8 helpers were too. They were brilliant. We chose the students that were our Maths prefects and also some others from one of my colleagues' tutor groups. They did our school proud and the Y2 kids really appreciated their help throughout the day.

If you're planning a similar day at your school it would be great to hear from you. What sort of tasks do you do at your days? How to you organise the days, etc. Get in touch my commenting below or find me on Twittter @mrprcollins

Here's to another fantastic Y2 Problem Solving Day in 2016!

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Intro to Indices (Starter task/ideau)

June 29, 2015, 3:34 pm

≫ Next: Simplifying Surds Task/Resource

≪ Previous: Y2 Problem Solving Day 2015

After the May half term we set our Y9s according to Edexcel's 'Baseline Tests' for their new 1-9 GCSE Spec. Since then we have started teaching them through the Edexcel new 2 year GCSE course. The first 'unit' of this is 'number' and includes topics such as HCF/LCM/Surds/Indices/Standard Form/Calculations/Estimation, etc.
When introducing the topic of indices I thought about how I wanted to do this as it's always been a topic I've found a bit 'dry' teaching as in the past I've kind of just gone down the route of giving classes the rules and then applying them to questions once explained. But, I wasn't sure where their current understanding of these would be and so I decided to write a bunch of indices related questions on the board (these progressed in order of difficulty from the top left of the board to the bottom right) and then, as students came in, gave them a post-it note to write their name on. I then told students to have a look at the questions on the board and then stick their post-it note on the board next to the question they felt was the 'trickiest' that they could do.

What I liked about this was that they were all, on entry, looking at the board to see the questions and immediately thinking about what they could do, what they had learnt in the past and what they didn't know/understand. They were asking each other questions, they were asking me questions, which I avoided answering at this point, and tried to place their post-it note on the 'trickiest' question they could!

After a 5-10 minute go at this, and once they had settled down, found their seats and done the usual title, date and margins I delved into the discussion part of this 'starter'.

I referred to the post-it notes and asked students to explain how they thought they'd 'evaluate' the expression on the board. This was the best bit as there were a lot of 'laws' that came from this discussion alone. I was able to do a bit of 'Pose, Pause, Pounce, Bounce'ing with the class as I already had post-it notes with different names on for the same questions. So, I was able to ask a whole bunch of 'Amelia...do you agree with Ryan...you've placed your post-it note on the same question' type questions.

I rewarded those students that were questioned and then, as the lesson progressed, those questions that weren't answered from the initial phase of the lesson were answered. Rather brilliantly, students suggested answers to the unanswered questions as they were learning the new 'laws' and we managed to fill in all but two of the questions on the board. This, for me, was great as my AfL was partially done by this alone as I could see which type of questions (negative indices) that we hadn't covered and needed to progress onto.

↧

Simplifying Surds Task/Resource

June 29, 2015, 4:09 pm

≫ Next: #mathsconf4

≪ Previous: Intro to Indices (Starter task/ideau)

A couple of weeks ago I was teaching Surds to my Y9 class (doing the new Edexcel 1-9 GCSE Spec). I was looking for a resource to use with them, having covered simplifying surds. I looked on the TES and found the below resource by Sharon Derbyshire (@numberloving).

The resource is differentiated into 3 different treasure hunt style tasks. There's a green, amber and red set. I just used the green and amber sets with my class. I gave them the worksheet, printed on both sides of A4 paper. They then chose which set of questions they attempted, the green or the amber. However, instead of running the task like a traditional treasure hunt where they move around the room answering a question then find the answer on another, I decided to just scatter the cards onto my whiteboard (as shown below). My students then answered the questions on the sheet and then, when ready, came to the board to write the lines of the joke in the space on their sheet. Some students chose to do all the questions first and then piece together the joke. Others did a question at a time, found the answer on the board (according to the colour route they chose) and then wrote a line at a time of the joke.

What I really liked about this task is that the joke is the same regardless of the route they chose and so students are working towards the same 'end game', just on differently difficult/paced questions. The scattered effect of the cards on the board worked well as some could see from their desks and others got up as they needed to. The different colours on the board made it easy for them to see which set they were looking for and there were a few cards that had the same answer, which got them thinking about whether the joke was actually making sense as they went through it.

The cards scattered on my board:

You can download the resource free by clicking on the below link...

https://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/simplifying-surds-3-levels-6158196

A massive thanks to Sharon for sharing and uploading.

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#mathsconf4

July 2, 2015, 3:47 pm

≫ Next: New School Year, New Role, New Classroom

≪ Previous: Simplifying Surds Task/Resource

#mathsconf4 took place on Saturday 20th June in London and I was lucky enough to attend my second #mathsconf having been to the previous one in Birmingham. Check out my previous blog post on #mathsconf3 here.

At #mathsconf4 I took part in 4 different sessions, each of which had their own things to share and I learnt a lot from each. I'll outline each of these below. However, before the first session we had the traditional 'speed dating' event. The event came with a lot more pressure this year - the final 'date' being the potential future wife according to @LaSalleEd! No such luck. However...I did pick up some great ideas that included:

1) from Chloe - a healthy reminder of open questioning and how she'd taken one of her school's units of work and created open questions from their previous statements. For example, rather than showing a triangle and asking what the shape was she'd ask 'what facts/statements do you know about this shape'?

2) from Miguel - www.graphingstories.com - I love the look of this website. Students get given a blank graph and then are shown a small video clip (one of Dan Meyer's) and are then asked to graph the story that is being shown in the video. For example, Miguel showed me one of the videos where students had to record the distance an object was from the camera over the time the video was recorded. The video clip is shown 3 times, once in normal speed, once in slow-mo and again with the iterations of time included. I'll definitely be including this in my teaching of real-life graphs next year - it's going in our SoW too as a suggested resource.

3) from Chris - I really like this idea...when teaching rotations or transformations: give students a set of axes with a shape in one quadrant and just ask them to rotate/reflect the shape - no other information than that and then just see what they come up with. Don't ask them questions, don't hint at anything and then get volunteering students to come to the IWB to draw on where they reflected/rotated their shape. Loads of discussion can then be had as to the direction, centre, number of degrees, line of reflection, etc.

After the 'speed dating' session I went straight to the first of my 4 sessions...

The first session I chose to go to was @MissBResources''Inspiring Independence and Progress'.
I'll say at this point that I recorded loads of notes on my iDoceo app as a separate 'lesson' on my planner - this made it very easy to refer to as it's stored under the right date, etc and is just another wonderful use of the app - I will be writing a post about this soon as I've used it all year for the first time instead of a traditional 'school planner'!
Referring back to my notes I took away lots from Danielle's session...
Danielle reminded me of @c0mplexnumber's growth mindset displays that would be great for our Mathematics corridors. This also reminded me of an idea @mathsjem spoke about at the last conference about having students 'success stories' on display when they had overcome something in their learning to succeed in their Mathematics.
Here are @c0mplexnumber's displays from the TES:
https://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/growth-mindset-displays-6441854
and
https://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/maths-classroom-displays-6441851
The next thing Danielle spoke about that I'd jotted down was having whiteboards on tables in your classroom at all times. Danielle spoke about the need to 'train' kids into using these responsibly, but the main purpose of this being that they could use them at any point to do workings, etc and not be afraid to make mistakes as with a whiteboard they can easily rub them off and start again, whereas some students don't like writing something in their exercise book in case they get it wrong - especially at the start of a new year when they've got a nice shiny new exercise book and want to make it all nice and neat and tidy (usually the girls)!
I love www.magicwhiteboard.co.uk's new Mathematics Notebooks and my department will be using these next year in a similar way with our Y7s at least and then see how things develop. More about these soon...but take a look at them here.
A reminder of the book 'Manglish'.
Learning Objectives should say '...to be able to...so that...'. The key part of this being the 'so that' to give students a purpose behind what is being learnt.
I totally agreed when Danielle said about the need to go broader with topics in terms of the contextualisation and links to other subjects/problem solving.
Oh on that note...I found in my #mathsconf4 goodie bag a very good poster on problem solving from AQA. Here it is...(this will be going up in my classroom next year, and my colleagues' if I can get it photocopied/can get more from AQA)?!

We then got introduced to a website similar to Socrative to get students to do a quiz on their mobile devices called 'Kahoot'www.kahoot.it - this website is free and looked really good. Worth a look.
Finally, I remember Danielle talking about getting students to convert between/from/to cumulative frequency graphs, box plots and histograms and getting students to think about how they would go from one to the others. This then linked in really nicely to my next session as this came up again there...

Second Session: Douglas Butler's (@douglasbutler1) 'Putting the Web to Work in the Classroom'
I must say before I start noting down the things I took away from this session that I found Douglas hilarious! He could definitely be a stand-up comedian if he ever gets bored of Mathematics and all things TSM. I could have quite easily listened to him all day.
In other news...I sat, like, 2 seats away from @ColleenYoung and only found this out right at the very end of the session - was a bit of a Twitter Maths Celeb moment for me having not met her before!
There is so much on Douglas' website that (ashamedly) I knew little of prior to this session. All of the things I will mention here can be found on there...
www.tsm-resources.com
The most impressive thing about Douglas' talk was the ease at which he took us all through Google Earth and Autograph to show us how you would use these resources to explain/show to students all about gradients, bearings, data and graphs/charts you can create, etc.
I love the idea of using images at the start of lessons on gradient and then using Google Earth to explore these further. I now know how to create paths in Google Earth and analyse the routes. It reminded me of a cycle app I have that maps out my routes for me and shows me the gradients at each point.
I like the real-life versions of hexagons and pentagons using Google Earth.
Jing is a great tool for screen capture and for creating movies. These can be used in a 'flipped learning' style where students can watch them prior to a lesson, or even as the 'Eastenders' moment at the end of a lesson to set up the next!
I need to look at Douglas' recommended apps for iPads on his site and I also need to use the linear clock he showed us - that looked really nice!
Then came the ease at which Douglas used a spreadsheet of data from his website and imported it into Autograph to then create histograms and box plots from, which I thought I could use when doing Danielle's task of getting students to consider how they could go between each one. I now know how to import a column of data from Excel into Autograph and will use this so much next year, where possible. I know I have Google Earth on my school PC, but need to check Autograph!
There was so much more here that Douglas spoke about from his website that I need to really check that out when I next have some free-time and I'll definitely be exploring over the Summer ready for September.

Session Three: Sarah Flynn's 'What I've learned from teaching new GCSE content to year 10 and 11 students'

This session was really interesting to see the difference in preparation teachers have had if they did the 'linked pair pilot' specification over the 'normal' GCSE when looking to the new GCSE spec. A lot of the topics that are 'new' to the new 1-9 GCSE have already been taught and covered in the linked pair pilot and so there are already resources out there that we, as Mathematics teachers, can use when teaching these 'new' topics. Sarah gave us a selection of these past paper questions to look through to see the difficulty of them/what students are expected. We were given questions on Venn Diagrams and on Graphs and finding areas under curves.

The main points I took away from this session were the emphasis on making links in Mathematics and students being able to form and solve linear equations from any context. Also, there is a stronger emphasis on ratio, proportion and fractions and these skills are combined in other questions meaning students need to be proficient with these skills.

Session Four: Amir Arezoo's (@WorkEdgeChaos) 'The Art of Leading a Mathematics Department'

I was looking forward to this session the most I think as it was the one session, when making my choices prior to the conference, that I really felt was relevant to what I needed at this stage of my career; I'm going to be Head of Mathematics at my school from September and so any advice I can get now is greatly received! I have a whole list of questions that Amir gave us to consider at the start and throughout next year - these will be really helpful and I will refer to these regularly. Amir went through each point throughout his session and in addition to these 'prompts' I also took away the following from this session...

A few books to look out for/get for 'Summer reading': 'Nix the Tricks' and 'Teach Like A Champion'.
Having a 'Common Calculation' policy across the school/our local feeder schools. I like this idea and it could tie in with our numeracy across the curriculum on a more formal scale. However, we have been used to saying 'let the students decide what works for them and allow them to use that method', rather than prescribing a single method?
We have a very old 'Mathematics' sign above our staircase at one end of our Mathematics corridor - Amir said about having a 'Welcome to Mathematics' sign and this will be one of the things I 'update' over the Summer at both ends of our corridor and above each staircase.
Interestingly, Amir spoke about departmental observations and how best to record these, who should observe whom and getting everyone in the department to observe one another. He then also spoke about what data to record on each teacher within the department and how that data should/would be used. I have no right or wrong ways to do any of the above - just ideas/questions to consider in line with my school and department and what currently works for us. The main thing I took from this session is that whatever I do has to be in the best interest for our students learning and our department - there is no 'one size fits all' approach to leading a department, but finding what is needed and what works already and going from there seems sensible. Our department is in a very good position and I don't plan on changing that! :)

So that was #mathsconf4 - another thoroughly enjoyable day spent. I took away so many ideas from so many different people. I haven't even mentioned the 'Tweet Up', which was another highlight. I even met up with my old NQT mentor from my previous school and another of my previous colleagues - it was great to see them and catch up. One of the best things about the events is knowing others, and, in turn, knowing that I do have lots of contacts with other Mathematics teachers in other schools that are all trying to be better. I have no idea if other subjects have a similar conference, but can safely say that being a Mathematics teacher at present is both exciting and inspiring.
I do like that about @LaSalleEd - they have the aim of all Mathematics teachers working together and these conferences go a long way to making that possible. So a massive thank you to La Salle for putting on such a fantastic event again. Thank you.

↧

New School Year, New Role, New Classroom

July 31, 2015, 2:42 pm

≫ Next: Venturing into the Office/Corridor

≪ Previous: #mathsconf4

As one school year ends the preparation for the next is in full swing! As of September I will be Head of Mathematics at my school and have moved into a different room in a more central location within our department and with the Mathematics office adjoining the back of the room.
The room, as you can see from the 1st 2 pics below, was in need of a bit of TLC and so I've been in cleaning and painting the room over the past week and a half before putting up my new displays and making the room my own.
I hope the details of the displays, etc will be useful to others and this will give me a chance to link the resources I have used and, more importantly, thank those who have spent the time creating them!

The pics above show the room as I had pulled down the existing display boards and my colleague and I were in the process of swapping over our rooms!

One week later, a new paint job and a lot of laminating, cutting and blu-tacking...here is the back of the room (the door leads to our Mathematics office).

It took ages to re-back the display boards as they are massive and go right the way along the back wall of the room. The top display board is all my students' work that I have collected this year and kept safe with the knowledge that I would be going into my new classroom. The majority of the work has come from the 'takeaway homework' approach that I have used with my classes. See my previous blog posts on this here.
I have kept 4 spaces for new work to be displayed as and when it comes in next year and these are just pieces of card stapled to the wall with a bulldog clip at the top (middle) to hang the work on.
I will continue to update this board as new work comes in. It took ages to sift through all of the quality work that I had handed in this year. There was far too much to actually go on the wall so I have kept a pile of work that I will probably end up putting on display in our Mathematics computer room or in our corridor display cabinets (to replace the older work that is currently on display).

The lower display board is made up of AQA's 90 Problem Solving Questions (available here). I intend on using these in my teaching much more this year and so have them on display to not only remind me, but to act as a display whereby students can go and look at the problems and then choose one to attempt. I may even direct them as to which question to answer as I will be mapping the questions to our SoWs. There is then a magic whiteboard on the display where they can have a go at working out the questions, alternatively they can do this in their exercise books of course. They can go and sit at the back and answer them or just write the question down and go back to their seat. I have a beanbag in my room so there's nothing to say they can't sit comfortably on this whilst working on the questions! I'm going to then get the solutions to the problems as they are done and write them on the magic whiteboard's clear sticky notes and then place these over the top of the questions on the display so the answers are also on display as they are done!

On the top of the wall you may just be able to make out some fantastic art playing cards that I found on the Internet a year or so ago (they've recently updated this with a 2nd set)! A different artist was given a card from a standard deck of cards and then asked to create their own interpretation of that card. I had them printed on card and have stuck these up. Next to them are a few probability statements related to picking a card at random from the set (excluding the jokers and front/back designs).

I also have my mrcollinsmaths YouTube Channel address and QR Code to remind students it's there for them to use when revising/doing their homework!

A panoramic of the 'Wall of Fame' with my students' work and 'takeaway homework' when it was first completed.

In the corner, at the back of the room behind the Office door, is my stationary cupboard and bookcase with my students' books/text books in. In front of this, at the moment, is my room divider with my 'Finished'display and on the other side my 'Concept Cards'display. This will be moved about as necessary for students to see/use.

On the back, side, of the room I have 2 other huge displays. The top one I have themed on developing a growth mindset in my lessons/with my classes. I have used @c0mplexnumber's 'How to Learn Maths'display (left of the board) and then was inspired by this tweet by @AndyBartlettCPD to put a 'fixed/growth' mindset display on the right of the board. I found a picture of a brain on the Internet and printed this out and then created some statements for either side to put around this (as in the tweet above). In addition to these I have put up AQA's Problem Solving Approach in Mathematics poster that I got free at #mathsconf4. I also have some of Sparky Teaching's 'Fail Safe' displays posters on here and plan on finding some 'inspirational quotes' to stick on the board too.

The bottom display is, of course, @Just_Maths''some elements of Maths'periodic table display. I couldn't fit all of the elements in due to the epicness of the display and so omitted some of them so it fitted; I like the discussions that this could create as to 'what's missing' and how I've arranged the 'elements'. I had to put the symbols up the side of the upper display board, but I think they look good here nonetheless.

This is the front of my room, far corner. I have my desk up against the wall rather than protruding from it so that I'm never sat behind the desk (as such). This way I have more space at the front of the room to prance about and do what I do best. It gives me more space in front of my IWB too (which, incidentally, is now up - I insisted on taking the one from my old room as I'm one of the only teachers in my school that use the SMARTboard and not the Promethean ones). Our ICT guys have been awesome in getting this sorted for me and it's all up and running ready for the new year!

Above my desk you can see my, rather blank, tutor display board. This is because my Head of Year will be giving us the obligatory fire safety/assembly seating plan/tutor time schedule laminates in our first meeting back and so they'll be updated then. I have, however, got my 'Be an Optimist Prime Not a Negatron' picture on there, right below the 'PCO' origami Marvel letters that I made last year.

Above the display board I have gone for subtle self-gratification and have my name in more Marvel origami lettering and then the two (amazingly awesome) pictures of me that one of my students drew. One of these (the superhero one) came from their takeaway homework comic on finding the equation of a straight line and the other was drawn on a thank you card they gave me when they left this year. Finish this part of the wall off with my Escher poster I got for Christmas last year and that's that bit done. You may also be able to make out my 'Constructions Comics' on the pillar next to my desk - I printed these out and laminated them to go on display, because they're amazing!

To the side of my desk, and on the front wall, I have my clock with the phrase 'time will pass, will you' around it. As well as 'Maths 2015-16'. The time display is supposed to be a bit 'tongue in cheek', as well as to serve as a reminder when I need to, lets say, 're-focus' some of my students. In the 'Maths 2015-16' display I made using www.tagxedo.com I have the names of every student I will be teaching this year in each of my classes. I have 6 classes this year and so each number is given to a different class, in the dash I have my class codes and 'Mr Collins Maths'. I wonder how long it will take for one of them to notice this!?

As my IWB got put up today I haven't completely finished the front of the room yet, but have made a start. I have the obligatory number line above the board and then my 'number cruncher' display that I used and regularly updated last year. I've already put up a new one for the start of the year (answers on a postcard if you have nothing better to do).
Then, next to the number line I have my 'Went to After School Revision...GET IN!' meme poster. I decided to put this here as those kids that do stay behind to do revision after school next year will see this as they leave the room, hopefully reinforcing that awesome feeling they should have that they've gone the extra mile to develop their Mathematics. I may even insist that they high-five it as they exit the room!?

On my door I have 2 new 'F8' door signs. One that says F64^1/2 (64 to the power a half) and on the inside I have F2^3 (2 cubed). It won't take long for an office runner to get lost I'm sure!

Finally, this is the side of the room. I have another of @c0mplexnumber's displays - the square and cube numbers. I love these and first saw them in my colleague's classroom and had to put them up when moving rooms. I also have the prime numbers that my students did for me a couple of years ago on the back of the beam you can see in the top of the picture. Hopefully this will help them remember these basic facts.

So there we have it, my room all set up for another school year (all bar a few last minute tweaks and additions). I feel very much at home in the room and have made it my own. Hopefully my students will be inspired by the room and feel comfortable in their new learning environment. Now...Summer Holidays! :)

If you like what you've seen/read and want to know more or want the resources for the display titles/letterings then just give me a shout via the comments below or tweet me @mrprcollins. Thank you to all of the above creators of the resources I have used, without them...my room would be far less inspiring!

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Venturing into the Office/Corridor

August 13, 2015, 4:17 pm

≫ Next: iDoceo

≪ Previous: New School Year, New Role, New Classroom

Having completed setting up my new classroom I decided to then venture into the office attached to my room and then the corridors where our department resides. First, a few final touches to my room were made...

I saw a tweet from @missbsresources about her brilliant Maths bunting and so I had to put this up in my room. I then asked Danielle for the template she used so I could make another set to go across the back of the room - meaning I had two strings of formulae/rules/key facts going across my room.
Danielle has all of these resources available on her blog here, check out her other displays too!

Above is the view from the back of my room looking toward the front - you can make out my prime number posters that some of my previous students made - these go with the other square and cube number displays I have so hopefully (hopefully) my students remember these basic (key) facts!

This is my typical view from the front of the room where I would stand to address my class(es). You can see the two sets of bunting up and the rest of my displays all complete. I also have positioned a grouped table at the back of the room...

I'm aiming to use these tables as a 'Help Desk' station as well as allowing students who have finished to use it to complete the problem solving questions when finished their set work.

I need to add some sort of sign on the table saying 'help desk', but it's all ready to go. I will try and use this as much as possible for students to come over to for help after my initial instruction at the front of the class; if they still don't understand they can come here for help. I will, of course, circulate my room as I usually do, but I know with certain topics some students struggle and need a different approach shown to them before they get started.
I'm also planning on using the space to call students over to look over their work, when I call other students in from other classes to do 'book trawls', to move students to if needed to work quietly...alone, etc, etc. I'm allowed the space as I only have 1 class where I have over 28 students and so these two desks will be vacant for the majority of my teaching time.

To the office...

In and around sorting out my new room I was also delving into the department office to sort it out and start putting up timetables and class lists for the new academic year. The office hadn't really been used recently and so I properly went through every folder/file/book shelf/resource as much as I could possibly stand. There were resources in there that were older than me and I was ruthless. Well, ruthless to the point of roughly knowing what I could throw out and what needed to stay/was still useful. In all the filing cabinets you can see we have hard copies of all past papers and resources for each topic that a previous Head of Department organised - I had no idea all of this existed as the majority of my personal teaching resources are on my computer/USB stick. So, needless to say, I found some great resources we can use next year and will be encouraging my department to look through the cabinets as if I wasn't aware as to what was in them there's a good chance others have no idea too! On the walls, I have put the departmental timetable and individual teacher's timetables so we can quickly see where someone is/what we have at a certain time/day when having our meetings. I plan on holding all of our departmental meetings in the office as, after all, that's what it's there for!
I also have each of our classes' lists on the wall so we can highlight those students that are receiving support from our departmental HLTAs.

This is the view from the back of the office, back towards my room. The book case currently has class sets of text books that are up for grabs to our teachers. Those that aren't taken up will be put in a separate cupboard where we have all manner of old text books, which we need to do something with. I would love to be able to send them somewhere where they can be made good use of, but don't have any contacts myself to any charities or organisations that send text books abroad to other countries where resources are limited - if anyone reading this knows of anyone then please give them my details to get in touch - @mrprcollins
The whiteboard will be used to put up reminders, etc and for when we share ideas/problems in departmental meetings - I'm going to try my best to ensure at least some part of our meetings are set aside for sharing good practice and ideas - 'teachmeet style' where possible so things are kept brief - following up with that member of staff for more details if interested, etc.
Over on the side by the door are all the revision guides I found whilst clearing out the office - these will be offered up to students who haven't got their own or can't afford to get one themselves...on a first come first served basis.
There's also an individual desk in the office for a student who may be 'on tag' with me for behavioural reasons - if this is the way our school's behaviour policy goes...we shall see, but it's best to be prepared for all eventualities!

At the back of the office we have a new computer going in by the departmental phone that we use to make calls home and then subsequently log on SIMs. The computer that's been in the office hasn't worked for a while so this will be a welcome addition as it will save staff having to go to and from their rooms to make/log calls.
On the display boards I intend on putting up our Schemes of Work in their current state (as they are a working document of course) so that we can discuss where we are with each year group, what's coming up and then what resources we each have for teaching these topics so that we can share the really good stuff and, especially with the new GCSE, discuss how to teach new topics/content.
All our new exercise books are on the left ready to be dished out in our first meeting back. We also have class sets of the Magic Whiteboard's new reusable notebooks that I will shortly be writing a separate post about.

Apologies if all of the above is a bit of me waffling my thoughts, in a way, I am. It's my way of getting things organised in my head as to what I've done, what I've still to do and what I plan to do this year with it! I often re-read my posts (someone's got to) and so this, if nothing else, will serve as a useful reminder.

Into the corridor...

Our 'Welcome to Mathematics' sign just as you come up, out of the staircase into our department. I made the 'Mathematics' using www.tagxedo.com. Each letter has all of our teaching names in it. You may be able to see one of the new door signs I have made for each member/room in the department. These are simply laminated A4 sheets that I've attached to the doors - they're all in the same format with the teacher's name/room number on them.

<-- One of the corridor displays outside our departmental computer room. We are very lucky this year, in that the room is being completely refurbished. I have already assigned the room to each of our classes so that each class has one lesson per fortnight in here (if their teacher wishes to use it). This means the room is, pretty much, completely used by us. Therefore, having spoken to the ICT department, we will be taking responsibility for the room, whereas before it has been used a 'freeforall' where any teacher can book the room. This year, it should just be used by us and maintained by us. The other computer room in our department can then be offered up to others and used by us if we need the extra computer room lessons.
Oh yes...the display...this is one of the displays I had up in my classroom last year - advertising www.corbettmaths.com and the brilliant 5-a-day resources. I used these with my Y11 class last year every lesson in the run-in to their exams and they, once in the routine, worked brilliantly on them and it was a great way to start our lessons. I thought it would be good to have this in the corridor rather than in my new room as more students would see it and therefore ask about/use the resources. Plus, it is directly outside the computer room and will serve as a reminder to our department to, perhaps, get students to do the 5-a-day for that day as their starter tasks whilst we're taking the register and setting the lesson up. I have QR Codes on the display so students can scan to go straight to the site/my YouTube Channel playlist where I have gone through a week's worth of questions (I set this as a holiday homework for my previous Y11s and so did the same as I asked them to do).

WOW! @solvemymaths' Mathematical Mr Men (see here).
These are fantastic. All 49 fit (almost) perfectly on this display board. I originally thought there were 50 and so in the gap that emerged I duplicated one of the Mr Men in the hope noone will notice - can you see which one I duplicated?!
In the top corners we have our school's 'cultural' SMSC logo as the personnel in the Mr Men tick this box! I do plan on 'protecting' this board by getting our wonderful faculty assistant to back it with that horrendous sticky-back plastic stuff that is a nightmare to use/apply!

Next to the door to the computer room, and adjacent to the '5-a-day' and 'Mr Men' displays I have backed this display board with some magicwhiteboards. The idea with this board is that I will get a 'problem of the week' put on the board for students to look at and attempt (not necessarily on the board itself as I can already imagine it being abused). I will source these problems from Twitter mainly and most probably @mathsjem& @solvemymaths' tweets!

On the other side of the computer room door I have put up 2 more displays.
The first is my 'the language of the Mathematics GCSE exams' that I had in my previous classroom - again thinking that it would be better served in the corridor. I took the key words/descriptions (in the kids terms) from my TES resource and then printed a few other key words students misspell and don't understand.

I love this display - another 'Wall of Fame'.
If you've read my previous post on my new classroom you'll know that the whole of the back wall display is devoted to my students' work. I believe I mentioned in that post that I had too much work to put on that display and wasn't sure what to do with it - I certainly didn't just want to get rid of it all or for it all to sit in a drawer. Additionally, I found a box file of 'display work' when I was clearing out the office. Now, knowing the students' names on the boxed and filed work, I am aware some of it is a couple of years old, but nonetheless it still looks fantastic and is worthy of being on display.
As you can see, there is still some space to be filled here and so we will use work created in the first half term of the new academic year to fill this void. Possibly from our Y7 'average student' project that we will use for our PPE (more to come on this soon).

So there you have it, all the work I completed a week or so back when I was at school...yes, I have had a bit of a break from it all - in fact, I've not been in school for at least 9 days now! The next time I'll be in is for GCSE results day as the school is closed due to water works being done. Fingers crossed to all our students...!

As per usual, if you want more details about any of the above just comment below or tweet me @mrprcollins. Additionally, if you're already a Head of Maths or are going to be for the first time this year, like me, it'd be great to hear from you! Thanks, Paul.

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iDoceo

August 14, 2015, 3:30 pm

≫ Next: Reusable Notebooks

≪ Previous: Venturing into the Office/Corridor

2014-15 was the first school year where I've used 'iDoceo' instead of the traditional teacher's planner. It is brilliant and worth every penny of the £7.99 for the app. There are so many benefits to using the app and for me personally, where I got an iPad prior to the school year starting, it just suits the way I now plan and work.
Below are a few screenshots of my use of iDoceo throughout the year. There are still loads of features I've not used and therefore these won't be mentioned below and so this is by no means an exhaustive view of what the app is capable of. For full information on the app, go to their website: http://www.idoceo.net/index.php/en/. I should also say here that I am in no way affiliated with the app and there are probably other similar apps available, but I love this one!

This is the first page of my iPad and as I use the app so much it has a permanent home on my favourites bar along the bottom of my iPad. The app is password protected and you can change this when needed. The app is also extremely easy to back-up and this file is stored either on 'the cloud' or (as I do) in my Dropbox folder as an iDoceo file ready for recovering if/when needed. This, over potentially losing a paper planner and having all your work lost for forever, is a very nice safety blanket to have!

Once I've opened up the app and typed in my passcode my 'classes' screen comes up with each of my classes. At the top of this screen you have the menu of options to choose between - your classes, schedule, planner, day etc. You can also back-up all the data from this screen.

On the left hand of the screen you have the 'reminders' bar, which I use as a quick 'to do list' - easily adding and ticking tasks off as I do them. It is also populated with your students' birthdays (if you add these in to your students details). This is one of my favourite features of the app as the kids are still amazed when you know that their birthday is a couple of days away or, indeed, that day. The little things go a LONG way in teaching and if you can unexpectedly wish a kid happy birthday they are bound to appreciate it and it shows you care! It is certainly worth the time when you initially add in your students' details.
From the 'classes' screen you simply click on each class name and it takes you to that class' page where you can see all the students in that class, their attendance, results, homework, notes, seating plans etc etc (more on these later).

Next along the menu bar at the top of the app is the 'Schedule' option. The 'Schedule' screen is shown below. On this screen you can see your timetable and each of your classes for each period of your timetable. You set your timetable up in the 'Calendar' screen, by adding in each of your classes to your timetable, which is totally 'customisable' based on your school's timetable and length of lessons/breaks, etc. The iDoceo website has plenty of videos you can watch to help you with this process and once you've got the hang of it, it is easy to set up the next time round. I've just set up my classes/timetable for next year and having done it all last year this was relatively straight forward!

You can add daily events from this screen just by tapping underneath the date(s). By clicking on each class/period in the schedule it will open up that class' screen.

After the 'Schedule' menu option you have the 'Planner' option. The 'Planner screen is shown below. This is the screen I use most when planning my lessons. Each class' slot on your timetable is shown and just by clicking in a class' section you are able to add notes and resources (any file/photo you have stored on your iPad/other apps/resources page in the iDoceo app). You can also add a symbol to that class/period, which I use to help me keep track of what I've planned, when I'm on a trip or on cover or when a class is being taught by our ITTs or even if the class has an exam and therefore I won't have that class that period. Events can also be added to each day on this screen in the same way as above.

What I also like about the 'Planner' screen is that you can add notes to periods where you don't have classes (as long as there is a period assigned in your calendar for that time of day). So, for example, if I have a free period (like on Wednesday 17th June below Period 1) all you have to do is tap in that section and it comes up with 'add class'. By leaving the class blank and just typing in the 'location' box 'meeting' or 'adhoc' you can then type notes in here just like you would a class. I did this most recently when I went to #mathsconf4 and added a 'period' for each session I attended so I could keep notes for later use.

This is what the box looks like when you are adding in your notes to a class/period. The little paperclip in the bottom-right corner allows you to add a resource or photo. You can take a photo too to attach to this period, which I did when taking screenshots of the presentations on the day. This works for any meeting or even 'learning walk' you do around the school when you want to take a photo of a display/note, etc for later.

From both the 'Planner' screen and each individual class you can access the 'timeline' for a particular class. This is fantastic and is another of my favourite features as it allows you to see each period for that class. So you only see that class' notes/lessons and can track the progress of the class, what you've covered with them, when you gave homework out, when the next time will be you'll see them, etc. You can even 'bump' lessons to the next available period if, for example, your lesson is cancelled last minute and you want to teach the lesson you had planned in their next lesson - saving you from copying it all over.

Each class screen:

You can set up any tabs you like in each class' screen based on what you need/want to use the app for. Usually I have attendance, homework, examinations and notes. For my GCSE classes I also have individual tabs for mock exams and homework sheets.

This is what the attendance tab looks like for each of my classes. Each day I take the register on my app (yes, as well as SIMs as it doesn't feed into this). I find it easier to track attendance on the app than I do on SIMs and I can clearly show students when they've been present (really useful when they try to wriggle out of doing homework by claiming they weren't present)! I take the register from the attendance app, accessing the seating plan option at the top of the class screen and then adding a column for attendance. I then 'attend all' students and just cross off those that are missing on my seating plan by just looking for the gaps in my room - you can customise your seating plan to the layout in your room so this is really easy - more on this later.

On the screen below you can see the 'homework' tab for this class. Here I have each separate homework sheet's score linked through from a separate tab for that specific sheet. On this overview sheet I can see the students mark and then a 'Yes/No' column for whether they have handed it in or not. This then makes it really easy to see who you need to follow up with and who, over time, is struggling to complete their homework. I found that these tabs are brilliant for parents' evening when discussing homework as it's all there in front of the parents to see. Now, I know you can do this with your paper planner, but can you click through to see the actual questions/topics they got wrong on that particular homework sheet, tell the parent's their average score for the 5/6 sheets they've completed that half term, etc...I'm guessing not. It makes everything far easier, far more professional as you don't sit there umming and erring when asked questions - everything you need is there as evidence to help you/them.

In each tab you are able to add calculations to columns to find average scores, add up columns for working out total marks over tasks/coursework, etc. Each column can be differently formatted. You can add in your own grades/levels/marks to assign to each column. Each column can have different colours, dates, heading, subheadings (I usually use these for the number of marks the homework was out of, or what day it was collected in, etc). Linking the columns to other tabs is easy, as is copying the columns across classes, saving you time setting up the tabs for all your classes. This is particularly useful when using the same exam/homeworks for the same year group as they'll need the same data and information; set it up for one class and then just copy it all over to the other class(es) in the same year.

This is the examinations tab I have for all my classes where I simply record all the assessments the class completes across the year. This tab works very similarly to the homework tab in the respect of assigning grade types and different types of data to each column. What I also like about these tabs is that using the tool icon (the spanner in the top left of the screen) you can easily move columns around so you can, more clearly, compare test data to target grades. You can hide columns or students too so you can just focus on a certain group of students or just look at some columns of data.

I mentioned that the columns on my homework tab were linked to other tabs where I had that homework's raw data. I do this too with students' mock exams or end of year exams as it helps me to see which questions were done well/poorly across the whole class. I can also see where each student picked up their marks, look at class averages, etc. I then just link the overall paper score to the 'examinations' tab, knowing I can quickly access the raw paper scores for each question with a few clicks. Each of these tabs can be exported to Excel for further analysis - or there's the 'Summary' sheet for each class, which I am yet to use, but will explore more this year.

Here's the raw marks tab for a homework sheet I gave my Y11s this year. I add a 'notes' section to these pages for tracking those students that fail to hand homework in or, in the case shown, the student does the wrong sheet!

Another of my favourite features is the seating plan page in each class' screen. You can add photos to each student in your class, which then makes it easy to see who you're putting where. Each students' box is able to be moved around the screen and you can have multiple seating plans for each class so you can keep track of where students have sat before or have a different seating plan for each half term/term.

The ease at moving students around on this makes it brilliant for trying out different combinations of students until you're happy with the mix/arrangement. You can even select to have certain information shown on the seating plan like SEN/Pupil Premium, which ensure you keep track of where these students will be sitting. This is also good for quickly exporting and printing out class info for any observations you have throughout the year. Each of the seating plans can be exported as a pdf for then showing on the IWB for the students to locate their picture and find their seat. The students (particularly the girls) do the whole 'oh no, my school photo' thing as they see their faces on the board, but soon get over the shock! The pictures are easily imported from SIMs by taking a screenshot and then using the facial recognition tool in iDoceo to import the photos - again, this is all explained in the iDoceo website videos.

Lastly, as you can see from the above - you can store your own resources in the iDoceo app for quick reference. This, I find quicker than going via all the different apps on my iPad as I just add them all in here (SoWs) and they're all to hand when planning lessons.

So there it is, a whistle stop tour of a few ways in which I have used this wonderful app this year. It has massively changed the way I work - has sped up certain aspects of my work as a teacher and made everything so much more organised. I spend a bit of time at the start of each term adding in all our school's calendar events so I can see ahead of time what is coming up and I'm usually the person in meetings, as a result, that is able to confirm when reports are due or monitoring weeks are coming up, etc.

I will be using the app again this year and highly recommend it to any teacher who is looking to organise their planning this year. I plan on using the app more this year to take pictures of students' work to show parents at parents' evening and to send e-mails of work that has been completed. Each picture taken can be assigned to a student on a particular day via the attendance tab and so it is far better than just taking photos on the iPad and then trying to work out a way of filing them somehow and remembering who's work it was you took the photo of before sending - with the app it does all of the filing/association for you.

I will also be setting up a 'class' for my department so I can track meeting notes and any other data I need to monitor throughout the year like report completion, etc. It will be easy to assign the departmental 'class' to a period for meeting notes, it'll be great at keeping attendance so I know who to go and see to ensure they're up-to-date with what they missed and I can easily export/e-mail meeting notes (and such) to the department when needed.

Download the app here.

↧

Reusable Notebooks

August 18, 2015, 1:00 am

≫ Next: just a teacher, trying to be better

≪ Previous: iDoceo

With the new school year approaching I'm looking forward to using the new piece of kit (stationary) that we've added to our teaching arsenal.
At the end of the last school year, Neil from @magicwhiteboard www.magicwhiteboard.co.uk sent me some of their new Mathematics A4 reusable notebooks to have a look at/try out and I loved them. So, I gave one to each member of our department to try out and, having discussed them in a weekly department meeting, decided to get each teacher in the department a class set of them for next year to use how they feel best (mainly because we all had so many ideas as to how to use them and couldn't agree on one single approach).

I thought I'd share our ideas as to how we're planning on using these reusable notebooks as I think they're going to be a great addition to our resources and the magic whiteboard company are currently offering class sets of these books to any primary school that would like them; so what we've come up with may be of interest to our primary colleagues looking to use them too?! For more details on this offer see the news article on the magic whiteboard website here. If you're a secondary school and are interested in looking at some of the books then check out the full range of them here (they've got plain, lined, ruled, maths and even music/manuscript books).

Here are the reusable Mathematics (gridded) books. They are A4 and are 1cm squared inside, which you can see from the ruler in the picture below. There are 8 pages in the book for students to use/reuse.

For each book we've got, we've also got a reusable whiteboard pen. This is the important bit as the ink dries within seconds and then can't be wiped off unless you use the eraser on the end of the pen or use a wipe (or just rub really hard). This means the ink stays on the page when you shut the notebook or lean on it, etc. You probably know what it's like when students use 'normal' whiteboards...they often end up wiping off what they've written on it (or their peer does it for them) and the whiteboard pens rub straight off when the ink is touched. With the reusable pens you don't have this problem.
This fact also means that the notebooks can be used over and over again and as long as the students treat the books well, can be wiped once used/when needed and given to others to use - for the next class (if using with a particular class for a certain project during a half term and then swapping, for next year's class(es), etc).

In this picture you can see the inside of the Mathematics (gridded) notebooks and the ruler to show the scale of the grid (1 cm squared). When Neil was creating the books he sought advice on what size grid to use for the books and I suggested that a 1 cm squared grid would be good to use as students can use these for accurate drawings of shapes to work out perimeters and areas, etc. We currently use A4 1 cm squared exercise books with our KS3 students and they're use to using these in the lower part of the school before moving to smaller exercise books in KS4.

Initial ideas...

As I mentioned above, we had a [brief] discussion in a weekly meeting about the notebooks and how best to use them. Initially, we spoke about using the books with a particular year group, potentially Y7 as we could 'train' them into how we wanted them to use them and it would then become part of our/their classroom routine. We also thought about using them with our [to be] Y9 students as they start their 3-year GCSE course and getting them to use the books throughout their Mathematics GCSEs. These are all ideas that are still up in the air and may well be what we use the books for in the future. However, we then had other ideas as to how the books could be used - to not restrict the use of them to a single year group and use them either with a specific class in our chosen year group (based on teachers' classes/timetable), or just as a 'general' resource for all a teacher's classes. So, as there were so many ideas floating around the table, we'll each have a class set to use for the first half term/term as we choose, before having another discussion as to how they've been used and how best to continue to get the most out of them - we'll also be able to discuss any teething problems with the use of the notebooks once the students have got their hands on them! I basically want everyone in our department to be able to use these resources, rather than restricting them to be used with a particular year group, which some members may not teach, therefore they don't get to see what benefits they could have with the students learning and our teaching of Mathematics.

The ideas we'll therefore be trying:

When using the notebooks with a specific class, to get students to split the book up into different sections. There are 8 pages so 1 suggestion was to split them in a way such that they would have a page for each area of Mathematics: Number, Algebra, Shape, Space and Measure and Data Handling (this may need to be tweaked for the new GCSE as there is a greater emphasis on Ratio and Proportionality), a couple of pages for rough 'workings' and then the other 2 pages to be used in an 'ad-hoc' fashion as needed - for example with spelling tests at points in our KS3 schemes of work when key vocab needs covering (something our school is introducing across all subjects). The different areas of Mathematics pages would be kept and updated by students with key notes/examples for them to refer back to throughout the year. For example, if covering finding fractions of amounts with students they would make some [condensed] notes on this in the 'number page' of their notebooks. Then, when covering converting between fractions, decimals and percentages, or finding percentages of amounts, the students may then update their previous notes in their 'number' section erasing what they had in their from beforehand and rewriting notes that combined their learning of these topics. Naturally, students would have to be 'trained' in this process.
Again, using the notebooks with a specific class, the notebooks could be used for students to keep as their revision notes for their GCSE examinations, say. This is something we have already been developing with our Y10s that will be going into Y11 in September. Basically, for the last term, to prepare them for their mock examinations and build their confidence with their Mathematics we did a certain amount of 'teaching to the test' where we told students that the topics covered in class would be on their end of Y10 mock examinations. We told them that it didn't mean those topics would be the only ones that would come up and didn't tailor lessons to the actual questions in the exam - just so we could say that they had covered a good portion of the content that would be on the exam. This avoided the usual 'yeah, but we hadn't learnt half the stuff on the test', although we've also had to take this into account when reviewing the results and setting of students for Y11. So, as we taught students over the last term, their homeworks were to keep notes of the topics covered in class that they could then use in their 'in class assessment' that we used as 'revision' prior to their mock exams. I created an exam paper similar to that of the one they were getting in their mocks and they used the notes they had been making for homework in the in-class assessment. This allowed them to see whether their notes were of any use, that they should have made notes/better notes if they had failed to put in the effort with their homeworks, the benefit of revision, that they had covered the topics and did know how to do certain topics, etc. So, with this approach the notebooks would be used in a similar way - for a class to keep their GCSE revision notes, updating them when needed and then using them as a revision tool to prepare them for their examinations. Students may need to take the notebooks home therefore and the notebook would be 'theirs', for a while at least, and then handed back at the end to be passed on to the next student.
When using the books with any/all classes, the notebooks could be used as a 'working' book, leaving their exercise books to be used for notes/examples/homework. This way the work in their exercise books would become like a 'rule book', ready to be used for revision without having to sift through pages of working outs on the same topic - hopefully saving pages in their exercise books. As teachers, we would mark the notes/examples/homework in their exercise books and their notebooks would be used for their practise of Mathematics - where they attempt to answer questions, make mistakes, correct them and repeat. This use (and any use of the reusable notebooks, really) would enforce the message that it is OK to make mistakes in Mathematics, that we learn from our mistakes and (in the case of the books) they can just be rubbed out and improved upon.

The Pens...!

In terms of the pens, we had ideas about these too. This varied depending on which of the uses we came up with above.

Give each member of the class a pen, possibly labelled with their name on, or with a number on it. The pen would either, a) stay in school and be kept by the teacher or b) be the students' responsibility, which they needed to replace if lost - offered in our school shop. The advantage of the keeping and labelling of the pens is that they could then be used as a random student generator (if kept in some sort of pot on the teachers' desk) or if numbered can easily be counted in and out.
This approach would probably mean students being given one of the pens with the book and they having responsibility of it and replacing them when needed (you can use other whiteboard pens with the books)
The pens would be kept in class with the notebooks and handed out when used in class. They would probably be numbered to be easily counted in and out - possibly then used as a random student picker for plenaries, etc by just calling out a number and the student with that pen then answering the question(s). There's a whole host of things you could also do with the numbered pens, which, if I decide on this approach, will probably blog about separately!

So they're our ideas so far based on seeing the notebooks - I'm sure we'll come up with more and will see what works and what doesn't. As we're planning on using these books with certain classes/years we will also order some into our school shop to give students the option of buying them for themselves, should they want their own notebook - just like we do with revision guides and the stationary our school shop stocks.

If you're one of the primary schools that have received a class set of the notebooks it'd be great to hear from you to compare notes and potentially come and see them in action in your school? Tweet me @mrprcollins or comment below.

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just a teacher, trying to be better

August 20, 2015, 1:24 pm

≫ Next: New Y11 Display - Key Info/QOTW

≪ Previous: Reusable Notebooks

In the early hours of this year's 'GCSE results day' I found myself awake, unable to sleep, in anticipation of today's revelations. Now, this is not just down to the anxiety of finding out how my students have done, but also just because my holiday sleeping pattern doesn't even entertain starting until at least 2am!

So, without even knowing how my students had fared this year and having read copious amounts of tweets concerned about grade boundaries, I found myself thinking about next year...how next year's Year 11s will do, how I can make sure they do as best they can with their Mathematics and how they can get the grades they need for college/life after school.

I'm just a teacher, trying to be better and here are a few of the things that I will try to be better at this coming academic year...

(some of these are specific to teaching Mathematics, others are more general, but all are things I will either continue to do, improve upon or try)

Numeracy

As a Mathematics teacher it's kind of expected that I'd teach numeracy in every single Mathematics lesson, but I know there is more that I can do when teaching numeracy. I see gaps in students' basic numeracy all the time, regardless of whether they are in Y7 or Y11. Much like, for an English teacher, teaching spelling, punctuation and grammar in every English lesson, numeracy is a key part of my subject that needs approaching and discussing as it comes up in lessons. Even more so, it needs teaching as a separate part of lessons for the weaker students who's lack of basic numeracy stops them from accessing the more complex topics in Mathematics.

So, this year I will aim to, wherever possible, ask students how they have done their calculations - what strategies they used to do them and how else they could have approached them by comparing their method(s) with others in the class. For example, when having to subtract 17 from 42 how did they do that - did they take 10 away from the 40 and then 7 away from the remaining 32? Did they 'count on' from 17 until they got to 42 - and how did they do that? By adding 3 first to 17 to get to 20 and then a further 20 to 40 and then the final 2? Or did they group the numbers differently, and why? I still find ways of doing calculations that I hadn't considered before and possibly didn't use at school myself/weren't taught, so my students are bound to hear ways to do 'sums' that they hadn't used previously too.

This year I am only teaching Y9, 10 and 11, but I do have the lowest set in one of my Y9 classes. So, I'm planning on using @Maths_Master's 'Numeracy Ninjas' with this class. I aim to use this in the first term with this class to set the 'Mathematical building blocks' that they will need before attempting the more complex topics. Ideally, this skills will have been developed in Y7 and 8 and they'll already be numerate, but classes like these need to constantly go over the basics to retain them. So, I will run the Numeracy Ninjas as starters to our lessons and watch their progress, hopefully seeing them become more numerate and prepared for their GCSE course (we'll be doing the new GCSE over 3 years from Y9). I'll be showing my department the Numeracy Ninjas and seeing if any would like to trial it with their Y7/8 class(es) - or see if our HLTAs could use it in their intervention sessions with students. I think it's a great idea and can already see students aiming for a 'black belt' in Numeracy - I know I already want one!

Another resource I will use to develop students numeracy is the @Corbettmaths 5-a-day Numeracy questions. I believe in the 'little, often' approach and so these questions will be great for weekly homework(s) or as starters in computer room lessons/lessons.

Problem Solving in Mathematics

Similar to how I'll be asking students how they approach their numeracy I will be aiming to develop students' problem solving skills in Mathematics. Students will need to be able to approach problems when entering the big wide world and will need to think about them, come up with a suitable approach and apply their knowledge to them. Students will rarely leave school and need to use the quadratic formula or find the sum of the interior angles of a regular polygon, but what they will need are the problem solving skills needed to look at a problem, think about what it is they've been asked, what information they have been given and what they know that could help them with it. When I get the dreaded 'when am I ever going to need this' question I usually come back with a statement/suggestion that it is more the approach to the problem/topic they are studying that they'll use in their future as opposed to the explicit rule/theorem itself, therefore preparing them. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't!

There is a greater emphasis on these types of questions in the GCSE examinations and as such, students need to be prepared for them. Questions that involve a scenario of some kind, various bits of vague information and a statement to prove right or wrong or 'show...'; those questions that are more implicit than explicit...they don't just say 'write this number in Standard Form', they have to work out what it is they need to do/use.

So, in order to develop these skills with my students I will use a 3-step approach similar to that on an AQA poster I received free at a recent #mathsconf.

I have this poster on display in my new classroom to refer to, and will, when students are presented with a question like I've described above.

I'll also be using AQA's 90 problem solving questions document wherever possible when teaching my GCSE classes (so all of my classes!) topics that these questions link to. Edexcel also have plenty of resources on the Emporium that I'll be using and I'm sure I'll find some resources on the TES too.

Dispelling the Mathematical Myths

'maths is difficult'

'maths is hard'

'maths is boring'

'I wasn't very good at maths when I was their age'

'I don't need maths for what I'm going to do'

'I hated maths when I was at school'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uYBoWH3nFk#action=share <--all these films Hollywood have produced (beware...some naughty words)! Thanks to @ddmeyer for this.

Oh and my current favourite comment from the #ChineseSchool

Teacher: 'What is Trigonometry'?

Student: 'Dicking about with triangles!'

Some/all of the above phrases/comments are bound to have been heard by all Mathematics teachers, at some point, as our subject does have a stigma attached to it. Negativity. Students, parents and even our colleagues can be heard saying these phrases and we (as Mathematics teachers) need to do all we can to dispel these myths/statements. It may be too big a battle to face, but I'll try and we all should. It still seems people are happy to say they're 'bad at maths' or were 'rubbish at maths', whereas they'd be horrified to admit they couldn't read or write. So, whenever a negative comment is said towards my subject I will challenge this statement. Every day I will aim to make my lessons as relevant and as engaging as possible so students enjoy doing Maths, but even then it may not be enough...

...I saw, in the local supermarket, a student I taught last year. She was a very able student and left with an A* in her GCSE Mathematics. I asked her how college was and what she hoped for her AS results and then couldn't remember if she'd taken Mathematics or not, so I asked! Her response was 'Oh god no, I hated Maths'! Naturally, I was horrified by this comment as I had taught her in her Y11 year so swiftly replied with 'Really? But you did so well and seemed to enjoy our lessons?' She then, rather kindly, said that she did enjoy the lessons and that the only reason she liked it/did well was because I taught her, but other than that she just didn't really 'like' maths. So, I don't really know what else can be done in these instances - I suppose I'll have to conceded that unlike myself and the other eager teachers of Mathematics around the country, it may not be for everyone?

Nonetheless, I can do my best to dispel the negativity towards my subject - to ask colleagues to be as positive about Mathematics as is possible when students ask them for help in tutor time, etc. In the same way that, for example, when Y9 students ask what 'options' they should choose all I ever do is say what I chose and why (because of my personal preferences/goals, etc), but would never deter/direct them from/to taking a certain subject.

Last year, I did a Mathematics assembly to each year group loosely based on how they can be better at Mathematics, when/where they can get support from us and (for the older students) how they should/could be preparing for their exams/mocks. I will be doing an assembly to each year group this year too and will try and focus on their approach/attitudes to their Mathematics this year...more on this nearer the time.

Making Mistakes

I will continue to ensure students know that it is OK to make mistakes in Mathematics. That we learn from these mistakes and they're key to us improving and learning. I wrote a blog post about the @magicwhiteboard reusable notebooks we have got for this year and these will be used by students to do their workings in class. They'll use them to do their work, make mistakes, rub them out, try again, make mistakes, ask for help, try again, get the question right and then repeat. They'll learn throughout this process and the perseverance to get from stuck to unstuck will be key in them learning new skills and becoming better Mathematicians.

I have a 'growth mindset' display up in my room this year and I'm trying to develop this with my students. The word 'yet' will be used more regularly when students state they 'can't do it', I will retort with a 'yet'. I will focus on students having put in lots of effort and for having improved or having tried hard, as opposed to just praising those for having got the highest grades or having completed all the work/getting all questions correct.

I will get students to challenge each other and question whether something one student has said is correct or not. The phrase 'do you agree [name]...?' will be used more in class when using @TeacherToolkit's Pose Pause Pounce Bounce in my questioning.

I'll also be using my favourite starter 'My Favourite No' ( <-- click to read previous post where I mention this) in class a lot more this year to cover misconceptions, highlight the importance of making mistakes and learning from them and encouraging students to try and that they'll be rewarded for doing so.

the new GCSE content

Oh yes! These new topics will be covered/taught for the first time this year and for our department we'll have to discuss these together in our meetings as to how we'll teach them to different classes. Some of us, me included, will be teaching some topics for the first time and won't have come across them since our own A-Levels/schooling. I haven't taught Mathematics post-GCSE so there will be a fair amount of 'brushing up' on some of these new topics, which I'm not ashamed to admit - I don't know everything 'Mathematics' by any means and am still finding links with current GCSE topics and discovering things/ways of teaching topics I'd never considered before.

Luckily for me, in my NQT year I worked at a school that did Edexcel's Linked Pair Pilot qualification and I taught the 'Methods' part of this qualification in that year and so have experience with topics like Venn Diagrams and Set Notation. At #mathsconf4 I took part in a session on the new GCSE content and the linked pair pilot was highlighted as a good place to get resources/past questions for teaching and preparing students for these topics, so I'll be using these to collect questions for use in class.

Furthermore, we are all extremely lucky that there are amazing Mathematics teachers already putting together resources and support materials for teachers on the new GCSE content.

@JustMaths have a whole host of blog posts already aimed at teaching the new 1-9 topics. Here's an example of their 'Error Intervals'post. They also have posts on Frequency Trees, Binomials and the SAMs for each examining body, just go to their blog here.

@mathsjem has been collating resources for each of the new topics on a whole page on her website www.resourceaholic.com here and it will definitely be a 'go-to' resource when looking for ideas/help with the new content. Jo has spent so much time putting everything together on her site and will no doubt be saving me hours of time and probably countless of other Mathematics teachers time too. So thank you to both Jo and JustMaths for all the work they've been doing on these - you're lifesavers!

Getting the kids Mathematical equipped

Over the course of the last few years it's been a right pain nagging students to remember to bring their calculators and other Mathematical equipment (protractors, compasses, rulers, etc) to each of our lessons. Some students have them every lesson without fail, but others rarely come properly equipped and have to borrow equipment. We don't have class sets of calculators in our school, although we do now have 1 class set of calculators to use if/when needed, but if we're all teaching Y11 at the same time (well, half of them anyway) there's no logistical way of us all using them - so we're reliant on the kids getting themselves organised. However, that's the problem - some of them lack this organisation and constantly turn up without (mainly) their calculators. This then either means they get lent one of the few calculators I own personally, work with their partner and share a single calculator or don't use one altogether. This has a massive affect on their learning and their ability to familiarise themselves with a single calculator and be proficient in using it come their examinations.
So, in a bid to emphasise the need for students to have this equipment for their exams I will continue to dish out detentions for forgotten equipment, but I've also already sent a letter to all Y9 (going into Y10) students highlighting what equipment they'll need for their GCSE Mathematics and how to order them cheaper via the school shop. We had a fair amount of orders in before we broke for the Summer and so hopefully there will be more students this year that come properly equipped to lessons.
Today I saw the importance of this as one student in our Y11s, having got 32 marks on the non-calculator paper, only got 16 marks on the calculator paper, which seems very odd and was our only real 'shock' result in terms of what was expected. Now, the low mark could be down to other factors, but I'd be willing to bet it had something to do with them either not having a calculator in their exam (although I checked with our exam's officer and she couldn't recall anyone not having one) or they just didn't know how to use it properly?!

Homework & Cultivating Independent Learning - little, often?

As I've said above I do believe in the 'little, often' approach to learning and this applies with homework too. In the past year I've tried varying approaches to the type of homework I set. I'm a massive fan of @TeacherToolkit's #takeawayhomework approach and will be using this again this year. I've had some fantastic work back from students using this approach and being given the choice and freedom as to how much they do each week to accumulate the required amount of 'chillies' across a half term, say, has worked well with my students. Equally, I have used 10 question homework sheets (available in my free TES resources here and here) with my Y11s to go over those 'bread and butter' topics and these have worked well too.
This year I may try giving homework to one of my classes every lesson, but just give them a small amount each night - say 1 or 2 questions to attempt before our next lesson where we'd start the lesson by going over the question in class and addressing any issues. I got this idea from a colleague I did my GTP with (@andydcodling) who is doing this at his school (my old GTP school). I liked the idea and so will see how it works with one of my classes and reflect on its benefits.
I'm also aiming to use the PRET homeworks far more this year than I have previously as I like the format of them and they cover a broad range of skills. @mathsjem has collated all of these homeworks on a website for teachers to use. Check them out at http://prethomework.weebly.com/.

All of last year we offered our students after-school and lunchtime support with their Mathematics every Friday (and, of course, teachers did other sessions as and when students asked for help) and this has made a massive impact for those students that turned up every week - outperforming some of their peers who didn't want to take advantage of the support. We'll be continuing this this year and I've put together a poster advertising the support sessions that will be put on display in each of our classrooms. This will hopefully encourage students to come and seek the support when needed and also get them to take a more proactive approach with their learning.

Linking Mathematical concepts together

Topics don't just appear as separate entities in the GCSE examinations and neither should they. There are so many links between the topics we teach in Mathematics and this is no better shown than in @Maths_Master's info-graphic/diagram on his website, which shows all the links between topics. Check it out here.
Wherever possible I will attempt to make these links in my teaching. Combining area of a rectangle with multiplying & simplifying surds by putting the length/width of the rectangle in surd form. Combining algebra with, well pretty much any topic - probability, similarity of shapes, volume of shapes, etc.
The most recent, quite controversial, example of this was of course...'Hannah's Sweets' (my ex-fiancé's name coming back in exam form to haunt me), a question that combined probability, forming expressions, fractions and forming and solving quadratic equations.

'There are n sweets in a bag.
6 of the sweets are orange.
The rest of the sweets are yellow.

Hannah takes at random a sweet from the bag.
She eats the sweet.

Hannah then takes at random another sweet from the bag.
She eats the sweet.

The probability that Hannah eats two orange sweets is 1/3
(a) Show that n^2 - n - 90 = 0

(b) Solve n^2 - n - 90 = 0 to find the value of n'

Our students clearly need training and exposure to these sorts of scenarios and being able to link topics/concepts together to answer questions. So, where possible I will look to create scenarios/questions similar to the ones recently seen in exam papers in order to prepare students as best I can. The linked pair pilot papers, additional mathematics papers and exam board resources should all be rich sources of these type of questions.

Assessments

Life without levels! This is one area that my school is a bit 'up in the air' about at present (with our KS3 that is). We will be adopting an 'EDSM' (Emerging, Developing, Securing, Mastery) model for assessing students progress in KS3 and so this will affect our Y7 and 8s. Our Y9-11 will be doing their GCSE Mathematics. Y11 on the outgoing spec, Y10 on the 2-year new 1-9 GCSE and Y9 the first year group to start the 3-year new 1-9 GCSE. So, there's a lot to keep track of, assess and review.
We have purchased Pearson's ActiveTeach and ActiveLearn product and so will be using their assessments for our Y9 and Y10. Our Y11s will continue with the outgoing spec as the last few years have done and they'll be 'past papered' up until their actual exams.
As for KS3, they'll also be using Pearson's assessments, but as to how we'll be reporting to parents I don't actually know as of yet - so this is one area I'll need to get my head around when going back and I'll trust it'll all be explained when we get back, if not - we'll 'Matherise' their assessments to what we need and ensure we know where the students are to prepare them for their GCSE Mathematics.
I do know that in KS4 our students will be doing termly/half termly assessments, these will all be tracked, students highlighted for interventions and our wonderful HLTAs involved. We fit all our assessments around the school calendar so we always have a set of 'results' to report to parents either via interim/full reports or parents' evening and this will continue next year.

Sharing best practice
The frequency of my blog posts has dropped over the past year or so due to me naturally picking up more responsibility with the day job. I like to think I still make time as much as I can to blog about my teaching of Mathematics and will look to do as much as I can this year, although I am minded that being Head of Department will bring its own pressures and this may affect my blogging.
However, I am keen to share my department's progress, ideas and struggles - there are plenty of you out there who have supported me in my teaching career so far and I know that over the next few years as I try to figure out what I'm doing I'll need the support and expertise of the Mathematics teachers on Twitter/in my local PLN. I consider myself very lucky to be able to communicate with so many fantastic people all over the country and it is no doubt that I have developed as a teacher as a result. I can't imagine having taught the past 3-4 years without the online support, guidance and resources that I have received/used, so thanks to everyone that has tweeted me, commented on my blog, spoken to me at #mathsconf or local maths meetings or TeachMeets, etc - you're all awesome!
My school is one of 3 in our local area that is linked together in what I like to call a 'Tri-Wizard Tournament'. We have joint INSETs at times in the school year and have (I think) 3 joint planning meetings after-school this year. I'm planning on using these as best we can to share good practice, but as they are not compulsory I'm hoping that the other 2 schools do want to meet up and share their ideas - perhaps in a TeachMeet sort of fashion with each of us sharing, say 2-3 ideas each, from as many of our Mathematics staff as possible - I think it could be really quite good. But, when thinking about the 'Tri-Wizard' meetings I'm thinking 'why stop there'?! Why not invite our other local schools, where I have contacts, to join us and collaborate together. I've been lucky enough to work in 3 other local schools in my time either on placements whilst training or as a full member of staff. I've also been very lucky to mentor some fantastic ITTs this year/last (you guys know who you are) and their schools aren't a million miles away from ours! So, if I can, I'll look to gather everyone together - just the Maths departments, talking about Maths!

So there you have it - the whirlwind of thoughts currently whizzing their way around my head. All of the above are the things I'm going to try and be better at this year, the things I'll try to improve on in order to provide the best Mathematics education I can to our students.
I hope this post (if you've stayed with me and have actually got this far) is of use to others - it'd be great to read/see the thoughts of others as the school year approaches, so drop me a comment below or a tweet @mrprcollins if you've written anything similar or have any 'golden nuggets'!

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New Y11 Display - Key Info/QOTW

January 23, 2016, 6:00 am

≫ Next: Teaching Trigonometry

≪ Previous: just a teacher, trying to be better

Last week I put up a 'new' display in our corridor. I say 'new' as the display has been up since the start of the school year...we just hadn't written anything on it until recently.
So, I found some very rare spare time last week and decided to start writing important information for our Y11s. The board is directly outside our ICT suite, which each class uses once a fortnight and is in the centre of our department, so the chances of the information being seen/used is pretty high!

I have just put the dates of the actual GCSE exams, the dates of their next assessments (1st week back after half-term) and then a 'Question of the Week' (QOTW). These questions will be taken from their mock examinations that were completed before Christmas. The one I chose first was the algebraic proof question you can see in the image below, as a few of our 'top set' students have been asking about this topic.

I will aim to update this and change the question each week, oh and patch up the hole that has been created (students generally line up outside the room and so their bags, etc, rub against the display...bit of a pain)!

I wanted to write this post following @mathsjem's Twitter chat this week about displays and add to what I've previously written about the display's in my room/our department this year (see here and here).

↧

Teaching Trigonometry

January 23, 2016, 8:21 am

≫ Next: Numeracy Ninjas

≪ Previous: New Y11 Display - Key Info/QOTW

Before the end of Term 1, I attended the #Christmaths event that @mathsjem organised up in London. Unfortunately, I was a bit late getting there and so missed a few of the presentations, but did manage to catch @Kris_Boulton's presentation. He got me thinking about how I taught Trigonometry and whether this was the right approach/best approach to it. What Kristopher said made a lot of sense...he suggested that the way in which we teach topics makes a big difference to whether students really understand what they are being asked to do or whether they have just temporarily learnt a process/method to follow, which is often later forgotten, leading to you having to teach the topic all over again.

Our Y11s had their mock examinations before Christmas and I had marked these before the #Christmaths event and so knew that my Y11s hadn't answered correctly the trigonometry question that was on their paper(s), despite being taught it last year, and most didn't even attempt the question...nothing. So, when I heard Kristopher talking, I thought about how I had taught them Trig and what I could do next time when teaching it to my current Y10s so the topic sticks next time. Kristopher was discussing about how we shouldn't be re-teaching topics every school year and that if we taught it 'right' the first time round, there wouldn't need to waste time re-teaching the topic(s). I know I'm going to have to go over trig with my Y11s again, before their actual GCSEs, so I decided to try my best to improve how I teach this topic to my Y10s so I'm not in the same position next year.

When planning the lessons, I've also incorporated some of the changes to the NEW 1-9 GCSE and I've made the lessons suitable for Foundation students too, when I need to cover this with them (probably, later on in their Y11 year). Initially, though, I have taught the below unit of work/series of lessons to my Higher set 2 Y10s.

Here's my new approach/how I've tweaked things...
This resource is available FREE on my TES resources if you think it would be useful when teaching the topic yourself! See here: https://goo.gl/eR1iNO

The lessons are all on SMART Notebook and on each slide I have 'pull tabs' that allowed me to refer back to learning outcomes, the trig formulae and other self assessment activities at the end of a series of tasks/questions.

I start the series of lessons/unit of work by getting students to measure lengths of similar right-angled triangles and divide pairs of these lengths by each other and see what they find. I then held a discussion with the class as to what they found and why the numbers come out the same, what this means, etc.
After I have discussed this, the ratios between different side lengths being the ratios, sin, cos and tan I then got the students to just focus on labeling the sides of right-angled triangles, dependent on where the angle is.

After they had comfortably understood the labeling of the sides I then gave the class some examples of how to find the missing length of a right-angled triangle using the sin ratio. During the examples, I refer back to the measuring task at the start of the lesson, bring up my Casio calculator emulator to discuss the importance of typing in the calculations correctly (using brackets), used the SOH triangle and linked to SDT/physics lessons and even referred to the sin graph. I just drew this on the board when a question cropped up about what sin (34) or sin (27) was...I drew the graph and wrote the 90, 180, 270 and 360 angles on the x axis and then drew a line up to the 'wave' and across to the axis to roughly show the value of it, we checked it on the calculator, etc.

All of the above additions/discussions continued or came up when students were then answering questions themselves.
These slides had 6 questions on them, 3 finding the opposite length and 3 finding the hypotenuse so they'd have to use the SOH triangle both 'ways'.
I got students to round to 3sf at all times as this is something we had covered previously in the year and I wanted them to continue practising this skill as the questions often ask for this degree of accuracy.
There were plenty of opportunities to discuss the rounding to 3sf too, when the answers were, say 8.99542 and the answer would end up 9.00, or when 8.596 came up as the answer and they had to round to 8.60...when they included 0s, when they didn't consider them 'significant', etc.

When introducing COS, after having covered finding a missing angle using SIN in a similar way; with me giving examples, showing them the emulator on the board and typing in the calculations, why we use 'shift SIN' and what that meant (what the inverse function was), etc...again drawing back to the graph and showing certain values on here, I gave students some basic notes to copy into their ex books. They had a similar set of notes to write for SIN.

After covering the slides/lessons on SIN and COS, finding both missing lengths and angles I did a plenary style task whereby students had to identify whether to use SIN or COS - I found students were discussing why it could/couldn't be one of them based on what they were shown quite a bit here and they were convincing each other whether they should or shouldn't stand up.

I then gave them more practice questions, but this time they had to decide which of SIN/COS to use and whether they were finding opposite, adjacent or hypotenuse. I used the 'pull tabs' lots here, referring back to the formulae for each.

The NEW 1-9 GCSE includes students knowing exact trig identities, so at the start of one lesson I just put all the trig values students need to know on the board and asked them to write down exactly what came up on their calculator (not to press the S->D button)!
After revealing the answers I dropped the bombshell that they had to remember each of these and be able to recall them in their actual GCSE (just like their times tables)! I said we'd do a timestablesesque quiz soon to test their memory of these. I wrote them on the board so that they could see a pattern between the values. By putting SIN, then COS, SIN, then COS from 0 degrees to 90 degrees you get a pattern emerge - see the slide. I said as long as they remember the first 5 they just reverse the order of the answers for the 2nd 5. As for the TAN values...I just said they'd have to remember these as they were as I didn't see a better way of remembering them!? Has anybody any ways of them remembering these?

In the next set of questions, there was one which comes out as cos-1 (8/16), so cos-1 (1/2) when finding one of the missing angles - at this point I referred back to the trig identities and asked if anyone would know what the answer would be before we even typed it into the calculator, based on what we had done before. Some then had a 'light bulb' moment, shouting out 60 with glee!!

Once all 3 had been covered, in the same way, keeping the consistency between my approach each lesson so the only thing that was changing was SIN/COS/TAN or what length/angle we were working with, rather than the style of questions, ppt/resource I used, etc, I then gave them a mixture of questions where they had to decide upon what ratio and what they were working out, emphasising that they would not be told which to use in their examinations.

I then gave them some extended problems that used a combination of triangles and needed the use of Pythagoras or Trig.
That's where I'm up to now. I have only just (after 5 lessons) mentioned SOHCAHTOA and have set them the homework task on the resource to find a suitable mnemonic for them to figure out which one to use for any question they're asked.

Next...I plan on giving them more basic practice questions where they have to decide which to use/work out. Then, I will be giving them some contextualised questions include bearings and combinations of triangles using a different set of resources I have used in the past - just a worksheet of 'wordy' questions. As I understand it...Foundation students will be given a 'simple' type question where they are merely given a right-angled triangle and asked to find a missing length or angle. The 'wordy' contextualised questions with other topics combined with them will be saved for the Higher tier?!

So, I did manage at one point to refer back to our work on Surds and hinted at the fact they may get you to use the trig identities in surd form to calculate a missing side/angle and put your answer in surd form. This went slightly over their heads and may have been too much at that point in that lesson when they had only just been told about knowing these 'off the top of their heads'!

I felt much more confident lesson to lesson when teaching the topic this time round. I thought more about how I was teaching it as I went through the lessons and covered many more questions/misconceptions as I previously had as the students weren't just given SOHCAHTOA in the first lesson and told a method/process to follow as I may have done in previous years...basically just teaching them how to answer a question, without much understanding of what/why they were doing what they were told.
I will see, soon, whether this approach/series of lessons has had an impact. We are following Pearson's 2-year SoW and I'm currently up to Unit 5. In their Unit 5 assessment there are plenty of trig questions that will test their understanding and, of course, in future past papers we give them/specimen papers I'll see if it has 'stuck' this time and hopefully, they won't need teaching it next year.

Please let me know if you've found this useful or have used this resource. There are bits of the resource that I have collated from other teachers...I've used a few of the fantastic Diagnostic Questions from Craig Barton and there are a few slides from other TES users too, which, if they are you (I can't remember who/where I got them from) please let me know so I can give you a mention/shout out here!

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Numeracy Ninjas

February 7, 2016, 1:51 pm

≫ Next: Y6 Problem Solving Day 2016

≪ Previous: Teaching Trigonometry

Massively inspired by this tweet by Jon O'Neil (@jonsmcest)
https://twitter.com/jonsmcest/status/690648802240434176?lang=en-gb
I have been putting up our very own Numeracy Ninjas Display this week.

If you are not familiar with Numeracy Ninjas then you must check out their website now and have a look at their free resource. http://www.numeracyninjas.org/
The numeracy intervention is working wonders at our school and we have all of our set 3 and 4 students across KS3 doing the programme. We typically have 3 or 4 classes on each side of our year groups and so we are mainly using with our 'lower-ability' groups.

The kids have taken to the Ninjas really well and after trialing the intervention programme in the first half term of the school year we were all happy to continue with it. I, personally, only have 1 KS3 class doing the 'Ninjas' and it has been a godsend in getting them in and settled and working silently for a sustained period of time. So much so, that I now do this with them every lesson, rather than just once a week like we started doing at the start of the year. The reason for this was that, without the Ninjas, the class just took ages to get settled and were very rarely quiet for sustained periods of time. Now, we have a good 10-15 minutes each lesson of focused numeracy.

After running the ppt for the 5 minute duration each session I go over the answers, the kids find out their scores/belt and then I choose 4-5 of the 'Key Skills' questions to go over as a class - some of these are chosen by the students as they ask how to do certain questions. This time is, in my opinion, the most beneficial as it is the moment where they get feedback from me and are learning more ways to do their basic numeracy. We discuss methods used by those students that answered the questions chosen correctly and I then tell them how I saw the question(s) and how I would approach them.

We have been doing the Ninjas in little A5 booklets in 10-session blocks. Each 10-session booklet has a table on the back where they can record their scores/belts. This makes it really visible as to how well they are doing and the progress can easily be seen.
I have even found other ways of using the class' numeracy Ninja results and building these into my class' learning. When covering unit 3 of our SoW (charts and diagrams), I got students to: draw a pie chart to represent the colour belts they had achieved in that 10 week session; draw a time series graph for their results and we briefly looked at trend lines and tried to predict what score/belt they would get next session and we looked at averages too.
By linking their numeracy Ninjas intervention into their 'normal' learning it has helped keep them focused and engaged.

Now I have put up the display, inspired by Jon's, the students each have a ninja with their name on it tagged to the display board. Each week I will update the board if a student needs to move up (or down) to a different belt.
We have also bought in some of the rewards from the website. We have pencils and postcards that we have started giving students who have made a significant improvement, or have consistently achieved highly. These have been gratefully received so far.

Here's the display board...

and again.

I have started to put the word out to staff about the display too, giving out a message in our staff briefings about the ninjas display and to get students to keep looking at the board/asking their teachers to move them up (or down) when appropriate. They're there for all staff to see and so my hope is that staff will see where particular students are, perhaps those that are in their form group or just those they are familiar with, and comment on how they're doing...'Joe, I notice you're on a red belt in your numeracy ninjas'...'Nicki, well done for getting a black belt, there's not many students on that belt is there...', etc! This should help encourage students and keep them engaged with their numeracy and motivate them to do better.

One of my students did say this week - 'oh sir, is this just one of those things that gets updated for the first week or so and then that's it'. No, no it won't be! I will aim to update the board as much as I can, at least after each 10-session booklet where we can take the modal belt for those sessions, or, for the classes that only do the ninjas once every week, their last score.
The only thing I can see 'negative' about the board is that for those students at the bottom it is a bit of a 'wall of fame and shame' - lets hope that instead of this we can encourage those students lower down to get into the green belt section (at least) and take every opportunity to move them up!

I love the Numeracy Ninjas and it has been a massive boost to improving students numeracy and engaging them in their Mathematics lessons in general.
I'm sure there will be future posts on how we are using the Numeracy Ninjas at our school.

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Y6 Problem Solving Day 2016

October 8, 2016, 1:43 pm

≫ Next: Open Evening

≪ Previous: Numeracy Ninjas

On Tuesday I hosted our school's annual Y6 Problem Solving Day, read more about the previous Y6 problem solving days I have run here. We had 5 of our local feeder schools join us for a morning of activities. Here are the activities I ran this year...

As there were 5 schools there were 5 bases for them to rotate around and then at the end of the day we did the usual team challenge...The Marshmallow Challenge!

Base 1 - 'Crossing the River'
This activity is well known and I found a nice introduction to the problem on the TES and used this as the 'base instructions'. I then cut out and laminated some of the characters in the resource to be used by the children to try and solve the problem. I managed to find a piece of blue scrap plastic to act as the 'river', but this could have been improved...especially if I had a boat too that they could have used to put the laminate pieces in.
The resource I used can be found at:
https://goo.gl/hv7W9F
Thank you to TES user cariad2

Most schools finished this one in 5-10 minutes so I asked a few extra questions on this base once they had finished to throw in a few extra scenarios. i.e. what if the fox could row the boat, can you safely get everyone across the river then? Does it take fewer or more steps if possible? What if the fox also ate the grain as well as the hen? Is it possible to get everyone across safely...etc.

Base 2 - 'Charlie's Shoes'
Another resource I found on the TES. This one I liked as the 9 grid of statements the children had to read through included some that were important to the problem and others that were not. They had to read the 9 statements and then answer the question given on one of the cards. I tweaked the wording of the cards slightly to suit the age and ability of the students. The hardest part of this task was to find an original price of the shoes based on a sale being 30% off. I briefed the teachers of each school prior to starting the task as to how they might support the students with this and then let them guide them from there.
The resource is available at:
https://goo.gl/sTUeIu
Thank you to TES user altypotter

You may have noticed the whiteboard books on each table and their accompanying correctable whiteboard pens. These are available from the Magic Whiteboard company. We have a class set of these for each teacher and are used in various ways in our lessons. You may want to read up on my previous blog post about these here.

Base 3 - 'Locked Up'
This activity was one my GTP mentor (Richard Cottyn) used to do as an end of term activity with his classes. It is one I am still very fond of, that creates a high level of challenge for students. The activity is based around a locked bag within which there is a prize. The lock is a 4-digit combination lock that students have to try and unlock. The students answer questions, in my activity they had 8 money based questions to answer. The sum of all 8 questions' answers should then give them the 4-digit code for the lock. All I did was write (took some questions from a text book) and ensured their combined answers added to the 4-digit code of the lock.
The students got very engaged with this activity and when getting the final answer wrong had to go back over their answers to check which was wrong. This I love as it got them checking eachother's answers and working together as a team to ensure they had all 8 answers correct before trying the code again. I put some sweets in the locked bag that, if they unlocked the lock, they could eat as they continued around the bases.
The questions I used can be downloaded here. (The number trail in question 8 was intended to be done from left to right and not applying the laws of BIDMAS).

The bag I used was found in my office (I think it was an old laptop bag). The combination lock was @MissJoyceMaths' gym lock...our Y9 helpers all now know when her birthday is!

Base 4 - 'Crack-a-lacking'
For this activity I used a 1-26/a-z codebreaker to set up a code for the students to crack. There were 26 questions (a-z) for them to answer, each with a corresponding number between 1 and 26. I made sure that a) did not equal 1 and b) didn't equal 2, etc so they had to think about it. The questions I used can be found here. The questions were all about properties of numbers and key number facts, etc. Once the students had their answers they new which letters to put in place of the numbers in the code that was on the instructions sheet. The code I used can be found here and can be edited for your own use. The code read 'Don't eat the marshmallow in the team challenge, you'll need it to win'.

What I liked about the code was that it did not contain every letter of the alphabet. So, although students may have worked out that the answer to question b) was 1, there were no 1s in the code and therefore no letter bs either. This got them thinking.

Base 5 - 'All Four 6'
The only remaining base activity from last year's problem solving day.
The students had 4 of each of the numbers between 1 and 9 and using any operation they liked had to make the 4 1s, 4 2s, 4 3s, etc, all equal 6. There were a lot of brackets used around the numbers and operations to ensure BIDMAS was applied correctly.
The 'All four 6' sheet is here if anyone would like to use it.

The students had a copy of the all four 6 sheet and the code to crack attached to the back of their answer pack, which is available by clicking on one of the previous links for the questions used in base 3 or 4.

Here's a picture of the students getting stuck into the first rotation of the bases...

We usually use our 'study centre' (school library) to host the event as there is plenty of space for all the children/staff. Luckily we were able to use this space again.

I was very fortunate that 8 of our Y9 students supported the event and were fantastic throughout. Each of them supported a school and then the left over students circulated between the schools offering help and obviously helped me out on the day too including escorting the children to and from our reception and tidying up the study centre afterwards. These students then helped out the department at our school's Open Evening later that week on Thursday.

Finally...The Marshamallow Challenge

20 pieces of spaghetti, 1m of string, 1m of sellotape, a couple of pairs of scissors and a marshmallow. The challenge...build the tallest structure possible in 30 mins with the marshmallow supported at the top of the structure. The height of each school's structure was measured and this height then gave them points to contribute towards their overall total from the 5 bases.

Here are my Y9 helper's attempts...

An ingenious use of the scissors to support the structure here!

This one stood standing the longest...by far!

Later in the year I will be running our Y2 Problem Solving Day, see previous posts about this here and here. Our school also do a cross-curricular Y5 carousel day that we will be providing a session for. More about these in due course.
Thanks for reading and I hope the resources are of use.

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Open Evening

October 8, 2016, 3:12 pm

≫ Next: #MathsMeet (20th October 2016)

≪ Previous: Y6 Problem Solving Day 2016

Open Evening is always a busy night on the school's calendar and this year was no exception. We had an extremely good turnout this year and the buzz around the school was great. We had lots of our students supporting the evening and attached to different departments for the evening, some were tour guides for our prospective year 5 and 6 parents and others were welcoming parents to the school and on 'car-parking duty'!
We were lucky to have the same 8 students who supported me with the Y6 Problem Solving Day supporting us in Mathematics, plus one other student who was selected to help out on her request.

The Year 5 and 6 parents were shown around the school on the usual route, coming through 2 of our Mathematics classrooms to see some of Y7 work and take part in some activities whilst meeting the department and asking us any questions they may have had.

I haven't written about what we do at Open Evening (or PPE as some call it) and so I thought I'd share what we did this year...

Since I have taught at my school we have always displayed the Y7 Average Student work. This is the first unit of work in our Y7 scheme of work and is what our newest students do each year on starting. They have to collect data about their peers in their new form groups and then work out averages from the data and choose suitable graphs/diagrams to represent their data before writing their own conclusions of their results. This has worked well in the past and it gives the students an opportunity to survey each other, helping them get to know one another. Each class's work is put on display across 2 tables (placed atop other tables).

My colleagues each set out their class' work on the large sugar paper sheets given to them. Work was checked for accuracy and spellings, etc before going up on display.
The work gives the prospective students and their parents an idea of the standard of work produced by Y7 in the first few weeks in Mathematics. They then get set based on our school's baseline assessments and data from the Primary Schools.

In the other room we have lots of Mathsy activities for parents and students to have a go at. The first of which was the Darts challenge. Given 6 darts students/parents were challenged to get a score of more than or equal to 100.
Students were encouraged to mentally add their own scores, which were verified by our supporting Y9 students. If they added correctly and got 100 or more they grabbed themselves a sweet for their efforts.

This dart board is the one I have in my classroom as I often use it for rewards when students have finished work or personally when freshening up my mental Mathematics/getting out my frustrations prior to a class arriving!

There's a fantastic dart board investigation resource on the TES I have done a few times too, nearer the end of the school year, that is worth a look. Check it out here. Every Mathematics classroom needs a dartboard in my view!

The good ol'Horse Race. For those who don't know...you roll two dice add the scores on the dice together and that's the numbered 'horse' that moves forward one square in the grid. You keep going until one horse makes it out of the grid. The students/parents/student helpers are the 'horses' and I/the student helpers roll the two large foam dice to generate the numbers. Lots of fun and engagement from our visitors and throughout the rolling (the dice take a while to stop) we have lots of discussions around which 'horse' should win, which is most likely, which 'horse' can't win and why, etc. I use a random dice generator website on my iPad to speed up the rolling! The large dice are there to emphasise that a 6 on the first dice and a 4 on the second is a different outcome to a 4 on the first dice and a 6 on the second, etc.

Higher or Lower!
The standard 'Generation Game' higher or lower activity where students/parents get given a card (on the far left) and they have to then choose whether the card to the right of it will be higher or lower than that card. If they get all the way to the right end of the table they get a prize.
This gets them thinking about the cards that are higher or lower than the one they're on and what the chances are of them getting it right. Of course, they also have a chance of getting the same card and therefore losing either way.

Mathematical board games. Over the summer holidays students were all given 'Summer Work' to do. Our Y8 students going into Year 9 were tasked with creating their own Mathematical board game based around Time. These were some of our favourite games that were produced and so we thought it only right that they be displayed at Open Evening for others to see and have a go at.
Some students, including those chosen here, put in a lot of effort with their 'Summer Work' and you could easily see hours of work that had gone into their games.

The Frogs Problem is one I have used lots at our Y2 Problem Solving days, but the frogs are also great to look at and were well placed here too. The students and parents were tasked with moving the green frogs to the right lily pads and the purple frogs to the left lily pads by only sliding a frog to a vacant lily pad or hoping a frog over a frog of the opposite colour. The shortest number of moves to correctly swap the frogs over creates a nice sequence when increasing/decreasing the number of frogs on either side of the central lily pad. Although the work on the generation of the sequence and the nth term of said sequence is probably too advanced for Y6 students it shows that from a simple task/activity it can lead to some quite high Mathematics.
I had to investigate the frogs problem on my GTP course and so I like that it has it's place at our open evening. What I should do next time, is dig out my old coursework on it to display alongside it for any parents/students that are curious as to what I'm rambling on about when I start talking about sequences!

So that's what we did at Open Evening this year amongst talking to students and parents. This, of course, was the most rewarding part of the evening - talking to our prospective parents and students. It was also great to see some familiar faces with our y11s that left last year showing up throughout the evening to say hello, and thank you for helping them get their C+ grades, etc. It made the long day worthwhile!

It would be great to hear what other schools did for their Open Evenings this year. Our Science department were dissecting stuff and blowing things up...so trying to compete with that is always going to be tricky, plus all the student helpers end up down in PE doing sports! I think we did good and like I said at the start of this post...there's definitely a buzz around our school at the moment!

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#MathsMeet (20th October 2016)

October 10, 2016, 11:57 am

≫ Next: #MathsMeet Presentations

≪ Previous: Open Evening

Updated
I have been fortunate enough to attend a number of TeachMeet events over the past few years and have benefitted greatly from the presentations and discussion had at them.

Whilst completing my NQT year I hosted #TMSurrey at my previous school and then later attended the event the next year.

This year I have been asked, by our Assistant Headteacher to organise and run a Mathematics focused TeachMeet at our school. So I am!

The Mathematics focused TeachMeet or #MathsMeet will take place on Thursday 20th October 2016 between 4:15 and 6pm at Oakwood School, Horley, Surrey, RH6 9AE.
We're right by Gatwick Airport and down the road from Horley train station, which is just one stop away from Gatwick Airport on the Southern Line. We have a large staff car park too for those who will be driving - plenty of space available!

There will be refreshments available (tea/coffee and biscuits) from 4:15pm with presentations starting from 4:30pm. There will be a raffle on the evening with some great prizes (Numeracy Ninjas goodies, books, wine, chocolates, Magic Whiteboard goodies, plus more to come) already being provided by some very generous friends via Twitter. Thank You!

Presentations so far include (in no particular order):

Jo Morgan @mathsjem - 'Five maths websites you need to know about'
Mark Horley (@mhorley) - 'The power of boxes and circles'
Ryan Foster - 'WAGOLLs and WABOLLs'
Paul Collins (@mrprcollins - me) - 'Engaging Students with Book Work/Worksheets (Codebreakers)'
Will Emeny (@Maths_Master and creator of 'Numeracy Ninjas') (via video) - 'Forgetting Curve Homeworks'
Michelle Mahoney (@Mahoney_Maths) - 'Assessment & homework without levels'
Paul Collins (@mrprcollins - me) - 'Numeracy Ninjas at Oakwood School'

All the presentations have a focus on the teaching and learning of Mathematics. The event should be great too to network and share good practice/ideas.

On arrival there will be puzzles and activities for all to complete on tables with some resources I really like put out for others to take away and use.

With just 10 days to go there are still places to attend and a few spots left to present so if you'd like to come along just e-mail me: pcollins@oakwood.surrey.sch.uk

Thanks for looking and I hope to see you there!

Paul

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#MathsMeet Presentations

October 28, 2016, 8:15 am

≫ Next: Interventions, Interventions!

≪ Previous: #MathsMeet (20th October 2016)

A week ago I hosted a Teach Meet with a Mathematics focus at my school. The event went really well and we had some great presentations that were given on the day.
@Mahoney_Maths has already written a great write up of the event, which you can read here. So, I won't regurgitate that here. Instead I will just post links to the very kindly shared presentations that were given on the evening.
Should you need further explanations on the presentations then please feel free to contact the presenter via their Twitter handle.

Thank you to everyone that attended the event, presented and helped me out on the evening setting the School Hall up, etc (you know who you are). I will look to host a future MathsMeet at our school, possibly after this Summer's GCSE results have been published and we have had time to think about the implications of the new GCSE, etc.

Presentations:
WAGOLLs presentation (Ryan Foster) is here

Engaging Students with Book Work/Worksheets presentation (@mrprcollins) is here
(the last slide on this presentation provides a link to @Maths_Master's Forgetting Curve Homeworks presentation

The Power of Boxes and Circles (@mhorley) is here

5 Maths Websites you need to know (@mathsjem) is here
Jo has been blogging more on each of her 5 recommended websites on her blog, you can see the first 2 here and here

Assessment and Homework without Levels (@Mahoney_Maths) is here

Numeracy Ninjas at Oakwood School (@mrprcollins) is here

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Interventions, Interventions!

February 5, 2017, 8:30 am

≫ Next: Being HOD/HOF

≪ Previous: #MathsMeet Presentations

It's been a while since my last post, way back in October after the #MathsMeet I organised. A lot has been going on since, at school; focused on Y11 interventions, hence the title to this post.
I thought it would be useful to highlight what we're doing with our Y11s and what is/isn't working (in my opinion).

Since the end of Y10 the year group were put into different tutor groups, based on their needs following their Y10 mock exams. These tutor groups are with specific teachers based on their subject that were already in the Y10 tutor team. There is a Maths, English, Science, 'aspirational', 'vocational' and then 2 'normal' tutor groups. The focus of these tutor groups is that twice a week they will come away from the normal tutor time schedule and focus on subject specific work. The students were placed into a tutor group based on their greatest need, following the results of their Y10 mocks and final report predictions. They stayed in these groups going into Y11 and have recently been rejigged based on the Y11 mocks and final reports and will now stay like this for the remainder of their time with us.
I, as Head of Maths, was not given a tutor group at the start of the year, but after the Y11 mocks it was decided that both myself and the Head of English would pick up a form of those students in our 'key groups' that needed additional support in either or both of the subjects.
As of the start of this term I was therefore given a group of 16 students that I now do Mathematics with every tutor time, except on Mondays when they have assembly. The head of English does similar with her tutor group. The other tutor groups now have slightly fewer students due to this creation of 2 additional groups.
So, there are now 2 tutor groups of students solely focusing on their Mathematics at least 2 days a week in form time. My colleague takes the other tutor group and is supported by another of our colleagues with that group.
With the group that I have, we do the daily foundation revision calendar questions created by @mrchadburn and this has been working well, with the students writing key facts/notes along with each daily solution in their exercise books I gave them. In addition to this, once we've finished with the daily question, they are given time to work through a pack of questions I printed for each, which includes a set of questions on every topic covered on the foundation GCSE. They are also given the opportunity to complete their Mathematics homework, classwork or to ask me any questions they have from what they have covered/revised individually.
Problems with the tutor group include low attendance from a few students placed in the group, meaning I've rarely seen them since the start of this term.
However, other than this, I personally think the group I have are benefiting from the extra time spent focusing on their Mathematics. I personally like now having the group. I missed having a form group, given that I had one previously for 3 years and enjoyed building the relations with the previous group I had, some of which I still hear from now and have seen at parents' evenings when they have accompanied their younger siblings. I've had e-mails from parents too to tell me they've passed their retakes and even a few of them have visited the school to say hi (it's always the ones you least expect that return to say hi)! These are the nice things the job brings that you otherwise miss from not being a form tutor - the little things that make a difference on a day that you're not as enjoying as much as the last; it's nice to know you're making a difference and that what you do is appreciated.
Hopefully, we will see an improvement from the mock results to the next assessment we do with the Y11s and will see some evidence that the extra sessions during tutor time are working.

In addition to the tutor groups, the students placed in both the Mathematics and English tutor groups have also been selected to be taken out of core PE (when it backs onto English or Maths) and to do an additional hour of one of the subjects. Some students are doing both and so are also being taken out of RE, which is then given back to them somewhere else in the timetable (I have no idea of the minutia behind all of the timetabling here, just when the Mathematics sessions are on)!
My colleague takes one side of the year for their double Mathematics lesson (1 lesson of their core PE and then the subsequent lesson where they would have normally had Maths) and another colleague (the deputy head) takes the other side of the year. We've only been doing these sessions for a week and have decided that they're not working as well as they could be due to the fact that 1) the students are begrudging missing their PE lesson and 2) can't cope with 2 hours of Maths back-to-back. So, I believe going forward they will be taken out of PE as per usual for the one hour and then go back to their normal Maths lesson with their normal teacher. Whether this actually solves the 2 problems above I'm not sure yet, but we'll see how it goes!

Like previous years we're also doing the usual after school sessions. These have changed in terms of what we've been doing in them. Before Christmas we were identifying students in our classes that were under performing based on their target grades and had them back with their class teachers working on specific work, chosen by the class teacher - just the fact we had them coming back and they were doing some Maths in addition to what they otherwise would have been doing was a start. Since the new year we have made these sessions far more specific with certain topics covered in each session after school on Mondays with certain members of staff in the department. We are each taken a couple of sessions each aimed at either Foundation or Higher tier students. The topics we chose were based on those topics that regularly come up in the exams (based on previous exams of course...no idea what will be the 'norm' come the new 1-9 GCSE)! Students were then chosen for these sessions based on who were still working below their target grades and needed the extra support, also those students that had missed some work or just had asked for extra help. These sessions are then repeated each Friday for any student in the year group that feels they need to work on Pythagoras or tree diagrams or whatever is being covered each week. The timetable of these sessions is sent to Y11 tutors and we give out reminders in our lessons as to what sessions are on each week, where and with what member of staff. We also have our faculty assistants print off reminder slips that are given to form tutors each morning to hand to students that are expected to attend the sessions on a Monday. This is happening in other subjects too especially English and Science.
All of these sessions and which students are required are kept centrally on the 'Intervention Bulletin' that one of our deputy heads collates and sends out each week. This avoids any clashes with subjects requiring the same student(s) on the same days. Maths and English are given priority.

I think that's it, well apart from the obvious teacher-led in-class day-to-day interventions, use of our TAs in department, etc.

It's a lot.

I think, for some students it's far too much, given that they are doing the same or expected to do the same in other subjects across the school too. It's overkill for some.
However, for certain students, it's what they need and have, in a few cases, asked for. They're motivated to attend everything they're asked to attend because they know they need help and want to be doing better. For one such student, we'll call him Bruce (because I recently watch Finding Nemo and find the shark funny), it is working wonders for him. He came to me prior to the mocks and was worried that he was struggling in the class he was in, he felt he was behind others and felt he knew nothing. He then moved into my class and was given the foundation paper for his mocks to hopefully build his confidence. He got a grade 5 on his mocks and has continued in my class, learning all the Higher topics that the class are still covering (we've still got too much to get through, but that's for another post)! He is in my Maths tutor group, he's in the timetabled intervention sessions, coming out of core PE and he's coming to every session after school. And, for him, it seems to be working. He's far more confident, he's coping with all the higher content we're covering and he will be sitting the Higher paper in his next assessment as a result.
It was even commented to me (and the Head, deputy heads, etc in a recent meeting) that Bruce wasn't looking forward to moving into my tutor group because he'd have to do maths every morning, and just simply liked the tutor group he was in previously. But, since he's been there he's really liking it and said 'that man's going to get me my GCSE', which made my day that day.

So, for some all these interventions can have a great effect on them and their confidence. But for others I wonder how much good it is doing and potentially how much harm it could be doing - some times too much of something isn't a good thing and they may be better off just being left to it themselves, but I don't think that would be 'allowed'?!

I do wonder if we did nothing whether it would be much different, in terms of the students outcomes, to what we are currently doing. Given the amount of effort put in by myself and my colleagues I do at times wonder if it's all worth it? What if we did nothing. Other than just teach good lessons and offer the kids a time after school once a week to do some revision and get help. Trust them to do what they need to be doing for themselves, rather than make all these sessions compulsory and punish them every time they failed to attend, etc. The trouble is, how would we know for sure what did or didn't make the difference. Equally, if these sessions and interventions continue to be directed from above how do we ensure we pick the right students to be in each form of intervention, all of it or none at all. It's not a 'one size fits all'...they'll work for some and have no effect on others.

Fingers crossed for them all come May/June.

↧

Being HOD/HOF

August 5, 2017, 1:14 pm

≫ Next: Goals #MTBoS

≪ Previous: Interventions, Interventions!

My time as Head of Mathematics has come to an end. As a result of doing the role for a couple of years I'm also moving schools for September. A lot has happened over the past few years, which I will reflect on below.

The year before I became Head of Maths I was 'encouraged' to take part in our school's middle leader's course in preparation for what would then become my role as Head of Maths, a role given to me by my previous Head at the school. She later went on to pastures new and my role started under the new headship. In honesty, I wasn't ready to be Head of the department, but with the previous HOD going part-time and soon to retire there was a need that I filled, willingly. The last two years have been turbulent, to say the least, with lots of difficulties faced and experienced gained. I'll outline my pros and cons, those I can remember, and am sure I'll look back on this later in my career when the role may be more suitable to me?!

Pros

I was able to say that I was Head of Maths at the school I once went to as a kid, the school I previously worked at as a cover supervisor and had taught for 2 years before I got the role. I was proud at this achievement and thought I'd spend the rest of my teaching career at the school.
The role bought with it the little things that allowed me to be proud and say that I was Head of Maths - being able to put it on my e-mail signature, my classroom door, the footer to all letters sent out to parents (although the first one to year 7 parents had 'Mrs P Collins' on it), to hand out the UKMT Maths Challenge awards at the presentation evening at the end of the year, to hold parents' information evenings to Year 11 parents regarding GCSE preparation, etc. I enjoyed being the Head of Maths at these times - including parents eves regardless of receiving concerns, complaints or thanks.
I feel I was always well regarded and respected by students at the school before I became head of Maths, but the role certainly added an air of authority which meant students never really argued with me or against me when dealing with issues within the department. I was always someone they could come and find if they weren't happy about something and settling issues between students and staff was eased by this authority I developed.
I'm a very organised person in general and this helped me revel in the admin tasks such as allocating classes/staffing, setting students, selecting intervention groups, etc. I was able to take certain 'trickier' students into my own classes (I knew I'd only end up dealing with their behaviour myself anyway so figured they may as well be taught by me). I was able to deal with classes that had had disruption in the previous year due to supply/cover issues and ensure students were with a member of staff they could/would learn from - the relationship was right in most cases and there were only a few clashes of personality we ever had to deal with.
I enjoy dealing with parents. This may sound weird or the last 'pro' I could list, but I do genuinely like communicating with parents, listening to their concerns and trying my best to deal with them. I feel I have 'a way' when it comes to responding to e-mails or telephone messages whereby they feel listened to and any issues were resolved fairly quickly.
In my first year as HOD the school's A*-C % increased by 5%, a modest rise from the previous year. Furthermore, I oversaw the change to the new 1-9 GCSE curriculum and am hopeful of good results this year - our Y11s this year were fantastic and couldn't have done anymore so whatever 'good results' look like this Summer, I hope our kids achieved them!
Another big positive from being head of Maths is that I got to know a lot more students within the school. You get to know them from doing the setting lists, when dropping into classes across the department, when looking at results from assessments and dealing with behaviour issues and weekly rewards, when dealing with parents e-mails and messages, etc.
The TLR was nice too, but not worth the 'cons' below...

Cons

Being Head of Maths meant more 'free' time on my timetable, which meant fewer lessons/classes to teach. This was the biggest issue for me when reflecting on reasons to find a role elsewhere. Being head of Maths took away from doing what I love...teaching. Dealing with all the other issues below meant my time was taken away from being able to develop my teaching, plan and prepare lessons/resources and essentially do the one thing I came into the profession for, to teach Maths to kids to the best of my ability.
I also had no form group as being Head of Maths, well until Jan this academic year when the maths intervention tutor group was set up. Something I didn't think I would miss too much, but did once I no longer had one. I missed the daily relationships with the tutor group and just having that contact with a group of students each day. The time gained wasn't worth what was missed.
Being 'bad cop'. I hated having to go and do 'book trawls' (scrutiny), homework checks on staff, SIMs checks of behaviour and subsequent phone calls, but mostly, following up on issues/concerns raised in line management meetings that I personally had no concerns with and didn't agree with. As a result, I found myself right in the middle of SLT and my colleagues, neither of them happy at times throughout the year(s), which I had to mediate and take.
That being said, line management meetings - the first year these weren't too bad as I used them to learn my role and guide me. However, this past year they've just been a continual one-way conversation on what needs to be done/what I should be doing, as opposed to any conversation as to what I would have wanted to do/felt needed doing.
The extra meetings you have to be a part of as Head of Maths take up more of your time, usually after school or in your 'free' time. The main negative with this, however, was being privy to the extra information discussed at middle leaders meetings and with the head. As a classroom teacher I was blissfully unaware of these conversations and I'd much rather have not been a part of them. It's just all added pressure and stress.
The general pressure and level of accountability of being Head of Maths is also a mahoosive step up from being a normal classroom teacher. You're the one in the firing line when anything goes wrong and you're rarely appreciated when things go well...you've just done your job!
Cover/Supply issues - oh my god the cover/supply issues! I had seen this happen in other departments across the school previously, but when a member of staff the year before I started as HOD handed their notice in on the last day of the summer half term we were left without a permanent teacher in my first term as HOD and throughout my 2 years we probably had around 10 members of supply staff to deal with. I had no idea of the work this caused the HOD. The lessons I had to plan for these supply staff/classes was ridiculous, the complaints from parents, the unhappy students who didn't take to the constant changes (understandably), took up the bulk of my time as HOD, this should have been the first bullet point!

I could go on with the 'cons', but I don't want this to steam roll into a rant. All I'd say is that nothing prepared me for the role, the stress and work I had to deal with and it's just not worth doing the job for the 'pros'.

So, it was in February that I decided to interview elsewhere for a Teacher of Maths role and I now can't wait to be moving back into the classroom where I can focus on being the best teacher I can be and delivering the best lessons I can for the kids I teach. I'm looking forward to going to my new school on Monday to set up my classroom (details to follow), to having a year 7 form group for the first time in my career, to running a lunchtime club, to getting involved with extra curricular events I've not felt able to the last few years and to just generally being happy at work again - I don't want to become part of that statistic of teachers who left within the first x amount of years!

There may come a time later in my career where I may be asked to step into the fray again, I'd imagine it may only be to cover for a colleague or if the school was in need, but I'd certainly be better prepared then! But for now, I'm happy in my classroom and seeing what opportunities present themselves there.

Onwards and upwards...

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Goals #MTBoS

August 5, 2017, 2:01 pm

≫ Next: New School, New Classroom 2017-18!

≪ Previous: Being HOD/HOF

Having not blogged for ages I saw @jreulbach's tweet announcing the return of 'Sunday Funday', a weekly blog prompt for Maths Teachers (mainly in the US), and this was the inspiration I needed to get back to it. Furthermore, I'm changing roles from September, stepping down from Head of Maths and returning to being just a normal Teacher of Mathematics in another of my local schools. I'm very excited about my change as I will be getting back to what I love doing - teaching, and not worrying about all the other external pressures being HOD brings (<-- see previous blog post).

So, this week's prompt is 'Goals'.

My 'goals' for this coming school year are wholly centred on getting back to focusing on my classroom teaching and teaching the best Maths lessons I can to the students I will teach. So, here's a few things (in no particular order) I'm hoping to achieve this year...my 'goals'...

Establish myself in my new school. Get to know my students, their parents/carers and my colleagues
Develop my teaching - all those new topics that have dropped into the new 1-9 GCSE I taught for the first time this year just gone by need developing and resourcing further as well as continuing to hone my craft in general
Get back to my blogging/tweeting/youtubing ways of old. I just haven't found time to do this as often as I'd have liked since being HOD and I thoroughly enjoyed them when I was a classroom teacher previously and it helped me reflect on my teaching and my students' learning.
Be a great dad! I became a dad for the first time back in May and intend to be the best I can for my (currently 3-month old) daughter

I'm very excited for what the new school year will bring. I'm off to my new school on Monday to set up my classroom, which I will blog about here next week (watch this space). Then, it's 4 more weeks of enjoying time with the family before starting back on Sep 4th with my new Year 7 form group '7PCO'!

I'm glad to see the return of the Sunday Funday blogposts and will enjoy reading others' posts.

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New School, New Classroom 2017-18!

August 9, 2017, 8:20 am

≫ Next: New Display - corbettmaths.com Revision Cards

≪ Previous: Goals #MTBoS

I had the excitement of going into my new school this week to 'do up' my new classroom and move all of my resources in! I spent the day there redoing the display boards and generally clearing out the room whilst trying to find new homes for all of my resources. I thoroughly enjoyed the day, especially given the ridiculous 'Secret Teacher'article this week about teachers working throughout the holidays! IMO if you want to go in and work, do so, if you don't, don't! There was no expectation on me going in and doing anything by my new HOD/school, I wanted to go in. I certainly don't feel it devalues the profession when teachers go in to school in the holidays and do work - it just shows that some teachers want to do that, just like any person would want to work in their 'out of office' hours.

So, here are a few pictures of my new room. A lot of the display material has been reused from my previous classroom display's (see blog posts here, here and here). I started taking down my displays towards the end of this school year so I had them all ready to go to the new school - I didn't want to spend time at my old school taking it all down in the holidays so used my 'gained' time to do a certain amount of this. I have put up a few new displays (mainly my revision board where I have all the corbettmaths revision cards up - I'll post a separate blog post about this and how I intend on using it)! If you want to know where I got any resources then just tweet me @mrprcollins or comment below.

Here's the view from the 'Maths Hub' room at the back of my room towards my desk. The display board you can see will be my form's notice board and general noticeboard for all those posters you're asked to put up throughout the year. So, it's left a bit bare at the moment apart from a few of my favourite pictures/images I've collected/been drawn over the past few years.
My formulae bunting and @MissBsResources' bunting can be seen over the windows. Available here along with a whole host of other fantastic displays.

This is the display board to the right of the IWB/whiteboard. I'm lucky to have quite a long room whereby the longest wall has an IWB in the middle, a whiteboard either side of it and then a display board both sides too. I like the symmetry!
On this board I have my 'Numeracy Shortcuts' - I couldn't think of a better name for it when I saw a tweet with the equivalent calculations. My students and I have used these loads over the past year and I believe they're essential in understanding the equivalence of the calculations. Knowing that finding 3/4 of something is the same as multiplying by 3 and then dividing by 4 (or vice versa), which is the same as multiplying by 0.75, etc massively helps when dealing with non-calculator problems. I find students often have a preferred method to work in, be it decimals, fractions, percentages or a combination of operations - so, if they know their equivalences it speeds these calculations up for them and gets them 'unstuck'.
Above this display board/whiteboard I have the square and cube numbers from @complexnumber (available on her blog here together with many other great display ideas). I think these look great and my students have always referred to them - especially when covering laws of indices and surds!

Here's a panoramic I took from the classroom door. I didn't know you could upload these to Facebook and they then become a 360 image where you can scroll through it and tilt your phone to view around - pretty cool.
I have my 'Wall of Fame' ready to be added to this year when I get good work from students in. The blank, pegged yellow pieces of card will hold the 'work of the week' and then rest of the board is reserved for those extra special pieces of work/homework received. I have a few examples up from the past few years to show students the type of thing that will end up there!

Similar view to the panoramic. You can see the yellow number line above the board. I use this on a daily basis and is a MUST. Honestly don't think you can have a maths classroom without one.
You might just be able to make out my large lime green calculator I've bluetacked to the whiteboard to the left of the IWB. This is great for showing students answers of sums they're doing and or quickly working out something myself in the middle of an activity. The calculator display is large enough for most students to be able to see it.

This is the view towards the classroom door and from the cupboards near the windowed wall in my room. I love the fact the cupboard doors you can see are all whiteboard doors. I have been told they don't rub off very easily, but I managed to budge the existing ink on them after a bit of elbow grease, so I'm sure they'll do just fine - especially as I've never had the luxury of having as much whiteboard space before. I usually had to use the magic whiteboard sheets to create more space.

Here's the 'Wall of Fame' display again (wall opposite the whiteboard/IWB wall). To the left is the corbettmaths revision card display which you can read more about here.
I'm excited to be able to put my dart board up again. It fell off the wall last year too many times so I got rid of it, but I think I've secured it better this year - time will tell. I love the mental maths involved in tallying the scores and I often through a few darts before a lesson starts to get my maths brain ticking over! I then keep the darts out of sight so the students don't 'mess about' with them. They then come out when a student/group of students are finished or when it's their turn to do some darts. I've used it as a reward in the past and it often engages the more reluctant students to do some maths without realising it!

You can't really see much more in this picture other than the 'finished' letters. The little unit underneath them is my 'challenge drawers'. In them are the AQA 90 problems and a whole bunch of other resources that my other half used in her classroom (she's on maternity leave at the moment having not long had our daughter so I've stolen them off her for the meantime)! I've put them here as it's right next to the whiteboard cupboard doors so they can work the problems out on here, or just take them back to their desk. I just need to label the trays up as the problems in each are of different levels of difficulty.

Over the 'Maths Hub' door I have the 'horizontal' and 'vertical' words to remind myself more than anything - i know which is which but always blurt out the opposite one first when wanting the other. I do the same with the colours 'yellow' and 'white'. No idea why, its just a 'thing'!

I've then put my revision memes from my previous Y11 revision board (see here) and my constructions comics (see here) on the wall next to it as there was a blank space!

So there it is.

I've tried to put up those displays that I/my students have used most/referred to over the past few years as well as having those images, etc that make the room feel like mine, that I like and make the place more interesting.

I still want to put up my artist playing cards that I've had up previously as they're great to look at, but I'll do that when going back in September!
Very excited to see what my new department thinks of the place and what the kids will say when they have their first lesson with me - hopefully they'll enjoy learning in my room.

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