Mr Collins Table Sheets...MATCH!!

 

2 years ago, whilst working as a cover supervisor and waiting to start my GTP in Mathematics I was doing a lot of private tutoring. I was doing this private tuition to a) keep my subject knowledge fresh and keep up-to-date with examination specs etc and b) to earn a bit of extra money to make up my salary.

Whilst I was tutoring I saw the need to create some revision resources for my tutees and indeed the Year 11s at the school where I was covering lessons. So, over the course of a couple of months I created my Mr Collins Table Sheets. Each of the sheets took me about 20-30 mins to create and I made 34 in total (enough for a whole class set). I blogged initially about the sheets last year at http://mrcollinsreflectivejournal.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/mr-collins-table-sheets.html and have uploaded all of them to the TES where they have been put into their own collection. You can download all of the sheets here. The sheets have received a bit of a mixed response on the TES due to some users not liking that they are hand-written and quite packed full of information. However, regardless I love them and recently got them out at my new school to try something new with them with my set 1 year 9 class and my set 2 year 10 class.

I gave the sheets to my set 1 year 9 class after we had our yearly parents' consultation evening. At the evening I spoke to the parents of all 32 of my year 9 students about their progress in Mathematics and told them about their GCSE years briefly having had the year 9 options evening the week before; many parents wanted to know about the 'additional Mathematics' GCSE that our top set students will be doing.

So, in order to give the class an insight into the types of questions they'd be seeing over the next few years I decided to, for one lesson, get out the Table Sheets.

 

How I did the lesson was as follows:

I gave out to each student one of the sheets and briefly explained the layout of the sheets and how they work in terms of some sheets having useful information/formulae that another person may need to answer a question on their sheet. I gave the class half of our lesson to then, working together, try to answer as many of the 10 questions on their sheets. They were allowed to consult with others if there was a question they weren't sure about or if there was someone else in the room that had something  on their sheet that they could use to help answer their question. Naturally some of the questions were too difficult for them as there were topics on the sheets they'd never seen before - this just added to their intrigue and I had a whole host of questions as to what was a reciprocal, what's the sine rule, how do I work out the volume of a cone etc.
After the initial part of the lesson I then bought out my newly created Mr Collins Table Sheets MATCH resource...

When creating the sheets I always had in mind the ability to use them as a sort of match between the two teams on the sheets: Raymond's Rovers and Collins City. On each sheet I have put a team shirt of one of the teams and these are numbered from 1-16. So, in order for me to run this team activity I have created a new IWB resource where we can have the 'match' between the two teams.

The resource can be found on the TES at: http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Football-IWB-Match-Activity-6319210/

Here is a print screen of the match screen...

 This is the main screen where you can see the interactive score and the starting 11 team shirts

 On this screen you can see the substitutes and the match ball, which is set as an infinite cloner allowing me to move the ball around the screen and attach a football image to each person that scores a goal

In order to make the resource usable for other subjects and for those that don't want to use the Table Sheets I have set up a slide where you can print out a team shirt to randomly give out to students (to determine which player they are and what team they are on).




How the match worked was as follows...

I started the MATCH by using my class' random name generator to select a student to have possession of the ball (oh yeah - you may need an inflatable football to throw around the room - they loved this aspect of it). If that student was in the starting 11 I would then drag the ball from the bottom left of the screen to that player's position. If they were a sub I'd ask them what player that wanted to sub off so they were on the pitch. Then they had the option to either pass the ball to another player on their team, or to shoot. If they passed then that player would then have the same option to pass or shoot, or even sub themselves off for another player! If they chose to shoot they would then choose one of the questions on their table sheet to answer (or, as I did with other classes choose one of the questions we had answered in class). If they got the question correct their shot would have been made and the goalkeeper from the other team would have to answer a similarly difficult question to save the shot. At this point I'd mention that I had purposefully given the #1 shirts to the G&T students in the class. If the goalkeeper got their question correct and it was the same difficulty the player would score, getting the advantage. If they answered a harder question however they would have saved the shot.
This worked well with goals being scored if both answered their questions correctly, however some students were saying their was no point in the keeper answering them as they'd score anyway - at this point I stressed that it was more about me seeing that both students had answered the questions correctly than it was about the scoring/not scoring -plus there was plenty of time for teams to equalise etc.
I then would go to the relevant part of the scoreboard and add a goal on. The great thing about the scoreboard is that you can add and deduct goals from a team's score and so it also becomes (if needed) a behaviour management tool as you can take goals off a team for poor behaviour.
The match then progressed by using the random name generator to chose the next student to gain possession after the goal had been scored. It it was saved the keeper just passed the ball to a member of their team, giving them possession.

The amount of fun that was had using this activity, with the inflatable ball being passed around the room, students decided as a team who should 'shoot' to give them the best chance of scoring and therefore bringing certain students off the bench or sharing formulae etc to enable others to answer their harder questions (the questions from 1-10 increase in difficulty). There are tweaks needed I feel in terms of the goal scoring/saving. But nonetheless it allows me to check students understanding whilst having an immense amount of fun.

Here's how my room looked prior to one of the lessons I used the sheets in...the amout of intrigue this created was amazing...

 

I have also used this activity as a plenary task WITHOUT using the sheets. Instead of the sheets I use the questions I give my students in the lesson as those that they answer when 'shooting'. When two students have answered the same question that question is then taken out of the game and students have to chose another question to answer when 'shooting'. The advantage this has had is that now students are used to the format (having done the activity in other lessons) they are motivated to answer as many questions as they can in the question answering section of the lesson as they know they'll need these for the match!

I'd love to hear any thoughts on how you think the activity would be bettered or if you'd like any further information as to how I run this in class!
I plan on doing a running league table pitting Raymond's Rovers against Collins City to introduce even more competition to the activity.