Earlier this term, I was revising the different types of transformations with my Y11 set 3 class as this was one of the topics that was flagged up from their mock examinations. After we had done a couple of lessons on the topic we had our fortnightly computer room lesson (each class gets one of these a fortnight). So, as my school predominantly uses www.mymaths.co.uk for these lessons, I went about the normal setting of the tasks and was all ready for their lesson.
However, it soon became apparent that the transformations tasks on mymaths require more than just typing an answer into a box and isn't naturally a great topic to do online; students are used to using tracing paper to perform the different transformations and I had taught them, for example, (for enlargements) to use projection lines to find the centre of enlargement, which they obviously couldn't do on screen.
So, as we were already, at this point, in the ICT room and the whole class were logged on and attempting the tasks, I needed a solution. Some of the students had intuitively started to get the mini whiteboards out and were reproducing the questions on their boards to then work on. However, this seemed like a bit of a waste of time. Cue me remembering my www.magicwhiteboard.co.uk sheets!
I asked my teaching assistant to go and get these out of my 'magic whiteboards' draw so that the students could use them as tracing paper over the computer screens. I asked her to get the A4 magic whiteboards as these would be big enough to go over the screens (we had previously used the 'magic sticky notes' in class when doing rotations, translations etc).
When the teaching assistant returned, I showed a few of the students, who had initially asked how they were going to do the transformations on screen, what to do with the magic whiteboard sheets.
It wasn't long until the whole class had a sheet and whiteboard pen. After a brief demo at the front of the class the rest were working on their tasks. Here's what this looked like...
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Using the magic whiteboards allowed my class to get on with the task where they otherwise would not have done so well.
Apart from one of the school's SLT coming in and almost having a heart attack when they seemingly saw my students drawing over the computer screens, the lesson continued as normal and plenty of revising was done.
N.B. NO SLT WERE HARMED IN THE DELIVERY OF THIS LESSON!
However, it soon became apparent that the transformations tasks on mymaths require more than just typing an answer into a box and isn't naturally a great topic to do online; students are used to using tracing paper to perform the different transformations and I had taught them, for example, (for enlargements) to use projection lines to find the centre of enlargement, which they obviously couldn't do on screen.
So, as we were already, at this point, in the ICT room and the whole class were logged on and attempting the tasks, I needed a solution. Some of the students had intuitively started to get the mini whiteboards out and were reproducing the questions on their boards to then work on. However, this seemed like a bit of a waste of time. Cue me remembering my www.magicwhiteboard.co.uk sheets!
I asked my teaching assistant to go and get these out of my 'magic whiteboards' draw so that the students could use them as tracing paper over the computer screens. I asked her to get the A4 magic whiteboards as these would be big enough to go over the screens (we had previously used the 'magic sticky notes' in class when doing rotations, translations etc).
When the teaching assistant returned, I showed a few of the students, who had initially asked how they were going to do the transformations on screen, what to do with the magic whiteboard sheets.
It wasn't long until the whole class had a sheet and whiteboard pen. After a brief demo at the front of the class the rest were working on their tasks. Here's what this looked like...
Using the magic whiteboards allowed my class to get on with the task where they otherwise would not have done so well.
Apart from one of the school's SLT coming in and almost having a heart attack when they seemingly saw my students drawing over the computer screens, the lesson continued as normal and plenty of revising was done.
N.B. NO SLT WERE HARMED IN THE DELIVERY OF THIS LESSON!