Advent Calendar Resource

Earlier this year, in February, I found the following resource (by dannytheref [@dannytheref])...

http://goo.gl/X3oP5u

The only problem with this was that I was 2 months too late! However, having remembered the resource, I relocated it earlier this week with the intention of using it this month in the lead up to Christmas for some festive starter activities to kick off my Mathematics lessons.

If you haven't seen/used the resource before you can download it from the TES by clicking on the link above. Here's what the resource includes...

The home slide is complete with a festive jingle. You then click on the doors to reveal the starter task/activity to do.

I recommend reading the instructions and answers document that accompanies the resource to fully understand all of the different activities on offer. These could be done on a daily basis with your classes or just randomly depending on when/how much you want to use this in your lessons!

My favourites are:

The product game - the resource takes you to a website to play this
Heads or Tails - classic!
'One of these things is not like the other thing' - sung by the Cookie Monster...what's not to love!
Pointless - brilliant game
The boys vs girls head to head - the accompanying music is brilliant

I know I'll be using this in my lessons this month. If you do too let me know how the resource goes down and don't forget to leave a comment for dannytheref on his resource too!

Year 2: Back in the Habit

Well here I am, the eve of the first half term of the school year and what a half term it has been! Much like the sequel to the popular film 'Sister Act' I am now well and truly 'back in the habit' and as my absence from blogging indicates I've been a very busy Mr Collins indeed. It seems like an age since I was writing my blog post about my new classroom and the set-up for the start of the year and now, 7 and a half weeks down the line, it feels like the Summer period never happened. Here are my reflections on the past half term...

As you will know from reading previous posts I have started teaching back at the school I once worked as a cover supervisor. It was 2 years ago this school year that I left to go and do my GTP and then subsequently my NQT year at 2 different schools in the local area. I've just received my 'induction' certificate from last year and with this came the realisation of what has perhaps been missing this half term...the teacher training meetings and ongoing evidence collecting. Now, don't get me wrong, the evidence collating I am more than happy to have disappeared from my weekly tasks, but I can't help but miss the weekly/fortnightly CPD that trainee teachers receive. I'm particularly talking here about those CPD events that are held externally, whether they be part of your Universities training programme or events held at local schools that your school have partnerships with. I like these days away from the classroom where you get to reflect on your teaching, meet colleagues that are in the same position as you, learn new techniques, ideas and gather teaching resources and essentially keep learning. I've noticed that without these sessions this year it really is just about getting down to it and getting on with the job of teaching. However, there may be something new on the horizon, which I'll write about at a later date.

So, without the trainee teacher element of my job what's changed? The main thing is the timetable...and all experienced teachers will know exactly where I'm about to go with this...my teaching time has rocketed! Last year I had my NQT time,which allowed me at least 6 free periods a week in a 25 period week. This year, without the luxury of the NQT time, I have only 3 free periods a week and this has made a sizable difference in my teaching time, planning time and (of course) marking time. Couple with that the challenges of starting a new school (albeit a school I know very well) and it's no wonder I've not been able to keep up with the blogging!

Now, I know my school very well having held my previous post as a cover supervisor for 2 years. However, in the time where I have been gone learning how to teach at other schools a lot has changed. Also, as I worked as a cover supervisor before and not a teacher, all the procedures that teachers are expected to follow and I suppose all those little things that differ between schools have had to be learnt, remembered and followed through. For instance, the behaviour policy and procedures are far 'tighter' than the schools I have previously worked at, and this is all for the better in terms of the teaching and learning that takes place in the school. This means that now, unlike in the past, there are behaviour points to log, reward points to log, phone calls to log, warnings to log, postcards to write, uniform letters to send etc etc. All these little things that are different take a while to embed in your daily routines.
The easiest part of being back at the school I previously worked at is the relationships I have with the kids and my colleagues. I am lucky that the classes I have in KS4 all knew me before I walked into our new classroom. This has allowed me to pick up on relationships I had already built up and take it from there. I have some fantastic classes to teach and this has made the 'settling in' period easier than I could have hoped for.

The one thing that has taken a while to sort out this half term has been the ICT in my classroom. I have persevered over the past 7 and a half weeks with trying to get everything the way I have had it in previous years. This has mainly centred around getting my interactive (SMART) whiteboard working. Now, by no means would I say that I have become dependent on my SMART board, but as I have made so many resources using the SMART notebook software it did have an affect on my teaching in the first few weeks of term. I had to find other resources to teach from, it took me longer to plan my lessons and I didn't feel as confident as perhaps I would have done. It also frustrated me as the IWB was there, but wasn't usable. I even started referring to it as the 'potentially interactive whiteboard to the kids'. However, all good things come to those who wait, and with the help of the ICT team after week 6 we were able to get the software working with the new Windows 7 laptop I had been given to 'trial' as a new member of staff. I even purchased myself some new SMART board pens/eraser to fill the gaps that were previously homed by a glue stick, board pen, blue tack and pen. Here they are in all their glory...

 For the past week or so I have been enjoying having the use of the SMARTboard back and I feel loads more confident, I can use all my resources I spent the time creating last year and the reaction from the kids is brilliant. I don't actually think there are many other working SMARTboards in the rest of the school that teachers use. This, for me, makes my proficiency with the IWB a tool I can use to my advantage as everything seems new for my students. When I first wrote on the board they seemed shocked, when I drag objects across the screen it feels like magic and as for the trick of rubbing out a circle and then tapping in the middle to erase everything inside the circle...I've become the new Dynamo! The only thing I then needed was some sound...as there were no speakers in my room I got some of those too and now I can use YouTube videos (from my channel or otherwise), the Chris Moyles Quiz Night videos for short starter tasks - my current students have loved these the past week, and of course...and yet to be introduced to my new students...Maths DJing :)

The above goes some way to summing up the challenges and differences of starting at a 'new' school this year. In addition to this there have been a few events that I have helped out with this half term. The biggest of these were the school's Open Evening and the Y6 Problem Solving Day. The school's Open Evening was fantastic and was one of those events that I was looking forward to. The reason behind this is that I love the school I work at, I went to the school as a kid and having worked there previously and now being back, I couldn't be happier. So, I'm keen to make sure that future students, our local primaries and our community see all the good things that I have and do at the school. So, at open evening I helped the Mathematics department ensure we displayed all the good work our Year 7s had been doing in the first 3/4 weeks of term (something the department have always done). Then in a separate classroom we had two activities running, one that the department have done in past involving measuring arm span and height and seeing the 'Mathematical perfectness' of a person. The other was an idea my colleague and I came up with and was to have the good ol' horse race probability task big scale on the class floor.
We created a 12 by 6 grid out of masking tape, had my numbered tiles in the 'starting squares' for each 'horse' (Y5/6 child, parent, uncle, aunt, Y9 prefect etc), we had the Y9 prefects rolling my large foam dice and encouraged visiting parents and children to take part in the horse race. For each race we explained the rules of rolling the dice to generate the numbered horse who would then advance down the grid. The winner being the first horse to reach the 'finish' square. The activity was a great success with children and adults taking part, healthy competition building between relatives and (of course) some good mathematical reasoning, language and logic being applied. It is something that we will look to do in future evenings.

Then, another idea I have for future evenings came about after speaking to my HoD about other tasks we could have going on around the room whilst the 2 main activities were going on. I suggested doing the 'frogs problem' and then said it'd be great to have a large version of that too and if only we had some large frogs! I have of course done this in the past using the students and chairs, but wanted something tangible for the children to pick up and move/leap. Cue my HoD's knowledge of another of our colleagues whose hobby of knitting stuffed animals could come in handy. She is brilliant and 5 more of the below little beauts will be made after she has finished knitting Christmas presents for her nieces and nephews...

How cool is he! I've named him Freddo.

As for the Y6 Problem Solving Day I'll be writing about that in a separate post as there's far more I'd like to say about that and resources to link.













Finally, a list of other notable events/things that have occurred this half term...

the staff vs staff football match against a local school (we won 1-0, undeservedly so)
the strike day, school was open for Y11, I was there
3 INSET days
Y9 'enterprise day', the less said about this the better
5 of my Y11 top set being entered in Nov and getting them prepared
regular staff football on Fridays (I've missed this)
Y11 invitation only parents' evening
the Y7 Fresher's Ball (I was the DJ)

Crazy Talk!

On Thursday 2nd May #ukedchat held its' second #TeachTweet - a take on the #TeachMeet phenomenon whereby Twitter users sign up to present a video of something they have used in their lessons etc. One thing that stood out for me in this session was 'Crazy Talk'. Software that allows you to take any image and make it come to life with your own audio.



'Crazy Talk' was mentioned in @SheliBB's presentation, which can be seen here http://www.screenr.com/GhQ7.

After seeing @SheliBB's presentation I looked up the software and have downloaded the latest edition (free). I believe I'm in some sort of 15-day trial at the moment, as to what happens after that I'll find out soon. I'm assuming there's a paid subscription to the software, but think there is a 'standard' free version too - as to what this allows you to do I'm not sure. So, as you can tell I'm very much in the early phases of messing about with this.

So, here's what I created...

For my Y10 lesson on simultaneous equations I had previously used (last year) a starter involving finding values for optimus prime and bumblebee images. So, I thought, how about I get Optimus Prime himself to introduce the starter task to the class. I found an image off of Google Images and then followed the simple instructions on the 'Crazy Talk' software to record by own audio of Optimus and then downloaded it as a wmv file. I then wanted to import this into my SMART notebook slides. However, you can (to my knowledge) only import swf files. So i used Zamzar to convert the file, which then imported easily.

The 'Crazy Talk!' Optimus Prime video I created is below to see...

 

You can also see below a print screen of my starter slide with the video imported...



My Year 10 class had a mixture of responses to this...some of them thought it was hilarious, some of the 'too cool for school' kids thought it was a bit lame and then, when they realised it was my voice, they probably thought I was a bit 'lame' too! I did give out a 'you may find this amazing, you may think it's a bit ridiculous' message prior to showing it and I did have to use a bit of self-deprecating humour here! :) Nonetheless I think it went down well on the whole and would definitely work better with the lower year groups. It made the class smile and introduced the starter in a way that, in the future, could help me do certain 'admin' based tasks whilst the class are being introduced the task. For example, next time I create one of these (and there will be a next time) I will set it up so there is a delay in the message starting after I have started it so it can be 'live' on the IWB, moving etc, as the class enter and then I can hand out books, take the register etc as they are working on the starter task.

It'd be great to hear how others have used this in their class and to what effect. Let me know!

April #blogsync - "Progress in my classroom? How it is made and how I know it."

This is a post in response to this month's #blogsync topic of "Progress in my classroom? How it is made and how I know it." To see all other posts in this month's #blogsync go to: http://blogsync.edutronic.net/

As this month's topic is all about progress in my classroom it has allowed me to reflect on what and how I have been doing with a number of my classes over the course of the year and to see whether indeed my classes are making progress.
As a lot of posts in this month's #blogsync have already pointed out there is not just progress to be had in a single lesson, but also over a longer, more sustained, period of time. It is the latter that I will talk about here as I feel for some (if not all) of my groups this is more important.

I will discuss 3 different ways in which I have seen progress with my classes, using 3 different methods of recording such progress. The first will be with my low-ability (bottom set) year 8 classes, the second will be with my year 9 top set and the third and final example will be from my year 10 set 2 class that are sitting the first of their GCSE Mathematics examination in June this year.

Year 8s (both set 5s on either side of the year) - Times Tables!
When I was given both of the set 5 year 8 classes to teach this year there was one thing that became apparent fairly early on - they were really weak with their times tables. This was mentioned in all of the students' reports at the end of year 7 by their class teacher and was evident in my 1st few lessons with both groups. So, in an attempt to make my students become better with these very important basics I decided to continually test them on their times tables and give them regular practice with them. How I do this is by getting them each, throughout our lessons, to complete the Interactive Times Tables 'game' that I found on the TES. The resource can be downloaded here. Now, I don't do this every lesson with the classes as too much of anything gets stale, but we do them at least once I week, on average, I would say. The students love doing them and often request to do them/ask if we will be doing them in lesson.
The advantage I have of having the bottom sets is that I only have 9 students in one set and 12 in the other. This means that the task does not interrupt our 'normal' lesson activities. I simply, whilst the class are working on the task given in that particular lesson, randomly call them up to the IWB to do the times tables 'game'. The game gives each student 1 minute to answer as many times tables (up to 12 x 12) as they can. Each question gives 6 possible answers to chose from, which for the set 5s is nicely differentiated. At the end of the minute I record their scores in my markbook and then call the next student up until all have had a go.
Then, crucial to the success of the task for this long a time, I give VIVOs (our schools rewards) to all those students that have improved their score by 3 or more, and then give the top 3 an extra VIVO each. This 'progress' is clear for all to see and I read out and congratulate those students that have made the 3 or more points progress from the previous go.

I have created a simple spreadsheet from all the lessons we did this in up to December 2012 and you can see a print screen of the results below...

I have highlighted 'student 4' above as this is the weakest student I teach in either of the 2 sets. This student didn't get a single times table correct in the minute given in his first ever go at it. Since then, the student is regularly getting over 10 a minute correct. Now, some might say that the familiarity with the task would naturally aid this, but for him it is a massive step forward. He has gained confidence with not only his times tables, but getting up in front of his peers and not being afraid to make mistakes, or be getting a lower score than others - and the rest of the class are surprisingly supportive of him and his quest to improve his score. I then created a graph of the class' average scores and you can see how this has improved since the start of the year. There are some dips here and there, and Mathematics is no straight line of progression from start to finish. Some of these 'dips' happen straight after school-holidays and this is a good excuse to remind the students of the need to keep practising them.

This, for my lower set year 8 classes is great progress. Especially as it was the one key thing they needed to improve on from year 7. They have all made progress over time, no matter how small and I'm starting to see now a greater ability for them to perform other tasks, and at a much higher speed than before. For example, when working out the area of rectangles they are able to relate this to the times tables 'game'.

Year 9 - Student Topic Trackers
In order for me to show progress in my Year 9 set 1 lessons I regularly have used my student topic trackers. I posted previously on the use of these here.

The topic trackers are a great way of showing 'progress' with the students' confidence from the start of the lesson to the end. On the topic trackers I split out all of the learning objectives for the series of lessons I will teach them on that topic. The lesson objectives progress in terms of their levels as you go down the sheet. For each objective there is then a 'before lesson', 'after lesson' and 'after revision' section for them to rate (on a scale of 1-4) their confidence with the lesson objective/s. This lesson based progress-o-meter is a good way of me seeing if the students have understood and feel more confident than they did at the start of the lesson.

Equally, from topic to topic, it is a good way of me seeing the progress they are making throughout the year. At the end of each topic I get the students to give themselves a level based on the topic trackers and the lesson objectives they feel most confident in and their respective levels. Then, from topic to topic I record, again in my markbook, the levels both the students give themselves and the levels I give them based on end of topic tests and h/w scores.

The topic trackers are then used for the students revision to go over those lesson objectives that they perhaps weren't so confident with. I can see these coming into play much nearer the end of the year when they will sit a GCSE linear paper prior to being setted for Year 10.

Here's an image of one of the topic trackers...

There have been a few suggestions from members of staff at my school as to how I could improve the use of these. The first would be to take their books in and do my 'teacher's comment' half-way through the topic, to make the feedback to them more useful perhaps as they go throughout the topic and be a bit more formative. The second is that they take quite a while to sit down and do the teacher's comments in the first place, so for every topic to cover in a year this could become too much. They do indeed take a lot of marking, is it worth it - yes, I think it is. Could the process be sped up somehow - I don't know yet. I have recently stopped using them with the class due to some topics we have covered being merely a 'refresher' lesson as the class would have covered it in previous year groups and so the topic tracker hardly felt relevant here. However, for those 'new' topics, or those that require a series of lessons to teach I will still continue to use them as I feel they are a good way of the students seeing the progress they are making - even if, as some would surely argue, it is only with their confidence and no concrete evidence of them actually making progress with the objectives. However, I would counter that by saying the 'after lesson' scale gets filled in in the 'plenary' part of our lessons having tested the students knowledge with an appropriate task. My teacher's comment and level are then based on the class work throughout the topic/objectives and their end of topic tests.

Year 10 - GCSE Mock Grades
In order to see if my Year 10s are making progress I have relied mainly on them completing GCSE mock papers and comparing the grades with their targets.
The class, to date, have done 2 official mock exams (Unit 1 [non-calc]) - 1 in January (straight after the holidays) and 1 at the end of February. They will sit one soon too by doing the Unit 2 paper (Calc), which will give me a further indication of their progress to date.
These results have given me a good idea of progress that has been made (if any) and the 'gap' still to close to their target grades.

Following the class' February mock, which was done in examination style conditions with the rest of the year group in the school hall, I showed them this notebook slide at the start of the lesson where I gave them their results back...

The 3 bar charts show (from left to right) the results from the January mock, the results from the February mock, and the class' target grades.







From the January mock the progress the class made was clear to see. We went from having 9 Ds, 18 Cs and 3 Bs to...6 Ds, 16 Cs and 8 Bs. There is still a notable jump to get the class to their target grades, but these are targets for the end of Y11! Still, I obviously want them to get their by June!

In that same lesson I gave out 'awards' for those students that had 'progressed' in some way from the January mock. The certificates/awards I gave out can be downloaded from my TES resources here. I gave those students that had progressed from getting a D grade to a C an award, those that went from a C to a B and those students that had continually showed progress in both the mock papers and all tests we had completed in class. There were plenty of students that received certificates in these lessons and this in itself showed me that the class have made progress (over the year).

I hope this blog post has been of use to others in how I have tried to show progress that my classes are making. I feel that learning Mathematics is definitely a 'marathon and not a sprint'. Sometimes students don't understand a concept or topic for years and then all of a sudden 'click' with it and get it. Sometimes we have to go back in our learning and make mistakes in order to progress.

Whether we, as teachers, are able to show that our students are making progress every 20 minutes of our lessons is something I'm not sure can actually be done. Can we show that progress is being made over time - Yes!

This is how progress has been made in (some of) my classes and I hope I have shown how I know it.

Mathematics 4 pics 1 word - 'Intro to Algebra' & 'Polygons' starters

As promised in a previous Mathematics 4 pics 1 word post, I have now finished my 'Intro to Algebra' 4 pics 1 word starter resource and I've also done a 'Polygons' one ready for going over Interior/Exterior angles of polygons with my Y10s in the next few weeks!

Both of these resources are available on my TES resources at:

Intro to Algebra: http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Mathematics-4-pics-1-word-Intro-to-Algebra-6328592/

Polygons: http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Mathematics-4-pics-1-word-Polygons-6328726/

Here are a few examples of what's included in these 4 pics 1 word starters, first up - the Intro to Algebra one...

A nice easy one to get started, got to love the Bert & Ernie pic!

Any artists out there will get this one straight away?!

??









And here are a few examples from the 'Polygons' 4 pics 1 word starter (this one has 10 different slides in it)...

This one features 'Paul' the Octopus that predicted the World Cup results!

Bit trickier?

This will hopefully lead in to teaching about the int/ext angles of polygons!

Another one of my favourites, possibly too easy though?








You can download ALL of my Mathematics 4 pics 1 word resources on my TES resources or just by searching for 'Maths 4 pics 1 word', like this.
Alternatively, if you'd like to see all the 4 pics 1 words blog posts then click on the '4pics1word' label in the word cloud to the left of my blog page, like this.

Mathematics 4 pics 1 word - 'Number' starter

Here's another Mathematics '4 pics 1 word' starter resource I have made. This time the resource is based around the 'Number' topics and in particular different types of numbers.

The resource can be downloaded from my TES resources at http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Mathematics-4-pics-1-word-Number-6328541/ and include some of the following...

 An easy one to get started!

 One of my favourites so far!

 

Inspired by currently reading Will Emeny's (@Maths_Master) 'The Magic of Pineapples' available on the Amazon bookstore for Kindle here (it's only 77p)

 

I'm planning on doing an 'Introduction to Algebra' Mathematics '4 pics 1 word' next and will put details of this up when I'm done! Let me know if you can/can't guess what the words are above!

Mathematics 4 pics 1 word - Circle Theorems Starter

This is another of my Mathematics 4 pics 1 word resources I have recently created. both my classes and I are enjoying using these in our lessons and I've found them to be a great way to test students prior understanding of key terms for certain topics.

Next week, when returning to school from the Easter holidays, I will be revising circle theorems with my Y10 class before then looking at the circumference/area of circles and length of arcs/area of sectors.

So, here's some examples of the new resource - I have included some of the previous 4 pics 1 word slides in the resource as they are also relevant here!

You can download this, and my other Mathematics 4 pics 1 word starter activities from my TES resources --> http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Mathematics-4-pics-1-word-Circle-Theorems-6328376/

Thanks again to @srcav, @reflectivemaths & @El_Timbre for the inspiration behind these resources - oh and to the 4 pics 1 word app makers (app still available for download here)

www.teacherled.com

Last year I found the following IWB resource... http://www.teacherled.com/resources/quiz/quizload.html and have put this to good use a number of times in my lessons as plenary activities to assess what my students have learnt. I'll either pair up students of similar abilities and ask them a question based on the lesson or I'll split the class into teams to answer questions.

I didn't, however, realise that this is just one IWB resource on a website FULL of IWB resources!

www.teacherled.com

I've just spent the past hour or so having a look at all the different resources on their and thought of how I might incorporate them into my classroom next term. Here's my favourites and how I intend to use them...

1) Keyword Jumble - http://www.teacherled.com/resources/keywords/keywordload.html

This IWB resource allows you to randomly generate a Mathematical word for students to unscramble. Very much like an anagram type starter activity and this is exactly how I intend to use it, either by choosing the randomly generated words, or (possibly more likely) to type in key words for the lesson one by one for the students to unscramble. The best thing about this is that as you type in the word(s) the letters are protected by *s so the students can't see the original word. The site then scrambles the word for you automatically generating your very own anagrams for students to solve. This will be great for literacy across the curriculum and for getting students to define each of the key words given to them. This would make a great starter activity for teaching a new topic or even for just settling students/giving them something to do as you come in.

2) Word Circle - http://www.teacherled.com/resources/wordcirc/wordcircload.html

This is a IWB resource very similar to the puzzles you find in the newspaper where you have a circle of letters that form a 9 letter word. The idea is, in the time given (3 mins built into the resource) to find as many 4+ letter words as you can from the letters given. I can see this being great for tutor time.

3) Letter Dice - http://www.teacherled.com/resources/letterdice/letterdiceload.html

Another great activity for form time this one...Letter Dice aka 'Boggle'. The resource allows you to roll the dice and then generate a 'Boggle' type board on your IWB. Students would then find as many words as they could in the time you give them. I could see this being used mainly in tutor time or even in a Mathematics lesson as a 'settler' activity, where students earn bonus points for finding a mathematical word!?

4) Algebra Substitution - http://www.teacherled.com/resources/algebraop/algebraopload.html

This IWB resource allows the teacher to go through some examples of substitution, choosing their own values to substitute in. The students can then complete the questions and then they can be checked automatically on the IWB. Good for checking understanding of BIDMAS (in some of the questions). This would be better though if the expressions to substitute into could be changed.

5) Prime Snakes - http://www.teacherled.com/resources/snakes/primesnakeload.html

This is the main reason I've spent over an hour checking out the resources on the site...it's ridiculously addictive, and quite hard too! The idea is you navigate the snake around the board trying to 'eat' all of the prime numbers. You'll need to use the arrow keys to guide your snake around the board. I intend to give this to my set 5 year 8 classes as they'll love it next time we're in the computer room, this way they can have their own game going, rather than having to take it in turns at the IWB (which is still plausible given that there's only around 10 of them in each class).

I'm sure there's loads of over IWB resources on this site I'll find a use for too, they've got isometric paper, clocks, 100 squares etc and some of the activities on there would suit Primary level Mathematics better than secondary, but are equally as valuable to those classes in secondary school that lack the basics.

To see ALL the IWB resources on this site check out http://www.teacherled.com/all-interactive-whiteboard-resources/

Mathematics 4 pics 1 word - Pi Day!

In order to celebrate Pi Day 14/03/2013 I have created this 4 pics 1 word resource to use as a starter with my students and open up a discussion with them about what Pi is, its' origins etc.

see my previous post on my Mathematics 4 pics 1 word here.

The TES website are currently doing a couple of competitions centred around Pi Day. They are as follows...

1) Bake a Pi Day pie - tweet a picture, and you could win £100 M&S vouchers

2) Upload a Pi Day Maths Resource, tweet a link, and you could win £100 M&S vouchers

Mr Craig Barton will be announcing the winners at 3.14pm on 14th March.

So, here are a few print screens of my resource and you can download the full resource on the TES at http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Mathematics-4-pics-1-word-Pi-Day-6323563/

Mathematics 4 pics 1 word

Over the past few weeks there have been a few tweets going round about the popular (free) app '4 pics 1 word'.

I have seen tweets from @reflectivemaths, @srcav and @El_Timbre all showing their own Mathematical versions of the app. So, taking inspiration from them I have started to create and use my own versions of these.

• Here is the link to @srcav's 4 pics 1 word blog post http://cavmaths.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/4-pics-1-word/

• Here is the link to @reflectivemaths' 4 pics 1 word blog post http://reflectivemaths.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/4-pics-1-word/

• Here is @El_Timbre's blog http://eltimbre112358.wordpress.com/

I created a 3D shapes version of the resource first of all for my Year 7 class and used it as follows: I created the resource on SMART notebook. I included all the aspects of the app on the slides including the 4 pics, the dashes ready for the word and the letters to choose the word from. In addition I added the 'can you define this word in a Mathematical context'. This, in my opinion, has been the greatest success of the resource as the definitions my students were coming up with were fantastic. We have a big literacy across the curriculum push at our school and so by having this activity at the start of our lessons the students not only know how to spell correctly the key words for the lesson, but they also write definitions for the words and share ideas with one another.
I run the activity using mini whiteboards, reveal each picture intially with the letters to choose from hidden by the SMART blind. Then, to differentiate, I would reveal the letters if the class were struggling to find the word from the 4 pics. This worked well as when I suggested if I should reveal the letters, some students were keen to not have them displayed before they had a chance to guess the word first, then after a little time a few would ask for the letters (whilst the others were writing their definitions).

Here are some print screens of the 3D shapes 4 pics 1 word:

 construction

edge









I have since created the 2nd of my Mathematics 4 words 1 pic (on circles vocabulary) and here are some print screens of these:

 arc

segment









I have uploaded both the notebook and the exported powerpoint files of these resources to my TES resources and you can download these below...

http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Mathematics-4-pics-1-word-3D-Shapes-6323057/

http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Mathematics-4-pics-1-word-Circles-6323524/

In the notebook files I have included a blank template slide for you to create your own. I find these quite fun to make and the kids respond really well to them. Activity takes 5-10 mins to go through each key word.
I will continue to upload these to the TES as and when I do them! Thanks to @reflectivemaths, @El_Timbre, @srcav & the people that made the 4 pics 1 word app for the inspiration.

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.

Getting SMART: Infinite Cloner

Having downloaded a resource from the TES last week on the Area of a Triangle I discovered a new tool on SMART notebook...the Infinite Cloner tool.

This tool allows you to copy selected text/shape an infinite number of times to drag and label diagrams etc.
In the resource I downloaded there was a 'Key Words' box with the words 'base' and 'height'. Both of these words had the infinite cloner tool on them. This allowed me to drag the word (creating a copy each time) to different triangles to label which of the sides was the base, and which was the height.

I really like this tool and can see it being used to label different sides of right-angled triangles when looking at Trigonometry, labelling different parts of circles, using it to quickly copy and paste text to others parts of your presentation (rather than having to press copy, paste each time), and many other ways I haven't even thought of yet!

All you need to do to infinitely clone text, or shapes etc is to right click on them and then select the 'infinite cloner' option. That's it.

Getting SMART: vanishing/revealing text!

Sundays = Planning days for most teachers (I assume) and mine has consisted of much the same. In order to prepare my notebook slides for my Year 8s' lessons tomorrow I decided to try out another 'trick' I read from the previously linked to presentation on ways to use SMART software.

This time I have used a coloured box and different coloured text to create an area in which answers can be revealed by dragging questions into it.

As you can see from the print screen below I have created 'Mr Collins' Amazing Perimeter Checkerer' that is just a rectangle shape coloured in purple. I have then got a few questions with lengths all in the same colour. What you can't see on this slide is that there is also the answer to each shape's perimeter in white text within the shape! The magic then happens by dragging the shape (which has all of the text and question number grouped together with it) into the 'Mr Collins' Amazing Perimeter Checkerer' space!

 This is how the slide will look as the students complete the questions.

When I want to reveal the answers all I do is drag each question, in turn, into the purple box. This then reveals the white text (originally hidden on the white slide background), and hides the purple text that was in the original question as it matches that of the background in the box!




I'm looking forward to seeing the class' reaction to this tomorrow when I use the 'trick' in class!

Getting SMART: 'Pull Tabs'

Last week I saw a tweet that linked to the following blog http://www.ncs-tech.org/?p=3087. On the blog was a downloadable ppt presentation that shows 38 interesting ways to use your IWB.

I had seen this before but having not really looked into using SMART software on my IWB didn't take too much of it in. However, over the past few weeks I have been using the SMART software a fair bit and am really liking the effect it is having in my lessons and the reaction of my students when I use a new 'trick' or tool on the IWB slides I have prepared - it still amazes them that I can magically make the answers appear by just rubbing the board (deleting the white text I have over the answers).

So, having re-read the ppt presentation on the above blog I decided to take a look at creating a 'pull tab' #17 on the presentation (slide 17 of 58).
Pull tabs allow you to group together a 'tab' (picture/shape) and a set of text. The shape/picture is then placed at the very side of the slide (with the text out of view). The picture/tab can then be dragged into the centre of the slide, with the grouped text to reveal hidden information. I decided to use this with my learning objectives and made a tab and copied this onto each slide of my presentation. I then was able to drag across the learning objectives at various stages of my lesson to refer back to what we should be learning and to do some AfL as to whether we had met certain objectives at stages of the lesson. It worked really well and there was, again, an 'Oooooo' factor from the class when I first dragged the learning objectives across.

To create the pull tab I:
created a semi-circle shape & put some text saying 'learning objectives' over it
typed in the learning objectives (the text to be hidden)
created a rectangle, with line colour set to white and filled this in with white too. I then sent the rectangle behind the text and then grouped the semi-circle, text and white rectangle together.

This then ensured that whenever I dragged the LOs across they entered over the existing info on the slide.

Here's some print screens of my first pull tabs...

 pull tab hidden on the right hand side

 pull tab then dragged across into the centre of the slide, revealing the LOs

on the next few slides, I referred back to the LOs, with the pull tab appearing over the existing slide's info (due to the backed white rectangle)

Getting SMART (notebook)

 This week I've finally downloaded my own version of SMART notebook onto my home PC. I have it on my school PC, but find I prefer working from home than at school - have more time to spend on work without getting distracted (which I do rather easily).

So, having installed it on my home PC, and having a fair bit of time to play around with all the features and create some of my very first notebook files here's what I've done and used in class this week...in terms of notebook: [some of these will be pretty basic, others hopefully a bit more advanced?]

Circle Theorems notebook...(Year 10 set 2)

• inserted text and pictures to create some 'Mathematical DINGBATS' (more on these later - see future posts)
• used the line tool and circle tool to create a circle theorems' question. I then produced copies of this image and then layered loads of different parts of the questions over the top of the original. The original I locked in place using the 'lock in place' tool and then I was able to drag the various parts of the question out to show the class what angle facts we could use to answer any question posed looking for any missing angle.
• inserted a link to a web page - so I could show the class various theorems on GeoGebra
• used the pen tool to colour in angles in different colours to highlight those that were the same, those that added to 180 degree or those that were half/double another
• I saved my ABCD Plenary slides so that they can easily be copied into future notebook files
• I used the record function and transparency function to record the GeoGebra activities as we went through them in class so that I could e-mail them to students for future revision

Nth Term notebook...(Year 10 set 5)

• inserted text, images and shapes - the shapes I used to 'box out' various parts of the slides that I wanted to uncover at various points in the lesson
• I used the screen shade tool to, again, uncover various parts of the slides as the lesson progressed
• I used the 'dual display' tool to show up on the IWB 2 slides at a time - this was so that I could differentiate the class' tasks and give them the choice of whether they did the right or left hand side
• (my personal favourite) I used the pen to draw on white text over the answers to the questions I had written on the board. I then, after the class had completed the questions, revealed the answers using the IWB rubber - I just rubbed off the white text! This created the illusion of me 'magically' revealing the answers just by rubbing the IWB - the year 10s loved this (as did I)!

Averages notebook...(Year 8 set 5s)

• Apart from the above, I used the table tool to create a simple table to show the definitions of mean, median, mode and range for the class to use as a reminder
• Printed off slides for the class to use to write down the example as I was doing it on the board - rather than writing out all of the information on the slide themselves

This coming week I have Scatter Graphs and Constructions to teach to different year groups/classes and so will be looking at ways I can use notebook to show these clearly - more to follow on these. I have briefly looked at the 'Mathematics' gallery on the software and hope there will be plenty on here that I can use in future too.

SMART Board Training!

As anybody will know from having read my 'reflective journal' blog last year, I thoroughly enjoyed my GTP. However, there was one thing missing from the year...SMART Board Training!

Yep, that's right, I've never actually received any SMART board training and as such any knowledge I have of my IWB and the SMART software has come from observing other teachers or by just messing about with it in class and trying things out. So, it's fair to say that my skills are far from perfect with it's usage. This, is something that I've wanted to get sorted.

Luckily, Miss Moore [@kutrahmoore] (the other half of Mr Collins) is currently doing her ITT and has recently had said training session. So, yesterday, as I needed to go into school briefly to use the guillotine, pick up a few books/paperwork I had forgotten to take home with me etc Miss Moore came with me and as I was doing the things I needed to do she showed me a few things she had been taught about the SMART software and the IWB.

Here's a video we created using SMART to showcase the things I was taught about (and now plan to use in my lessons to improve my use of ICT)...

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/37694946/smartboard.wmv (couldn't upload it onto the blog for some reason and so used Plan B...Dropbox!)

 

Here's what I was taught:

 

You can record everything you do on screen and then save this as a video file (wmv file). I thought this would be great for saving lessons and then sending to students via e-mail to use as guidance for homework or for revision. [click on the camcorder icon, then record button, minimise, carry on...stop recording, save]

You can use the 'transparent screen' as a 'layer' which allows you to write over any other file/program you have open. This will come in extremely useful as sometimes I have got a w/sheet or exam question that I get off the Internet or from the TES that I just print out and give to students to work through in class. Then, to go through the answers I'd load up the file and try and write over it, this either draws a weird pencil line on the doc (if in Word), doesn't allow you to scroll down to other pages without having to rub off what you have just written on it etc and so this will avoid these problems. [click on transparent screen, where the 'full screen' icon is]

You can take a snapshot of parts of a document/file/page etc by clicking on the camera icon and then the one on the left hand side. Miss Moore was told that was the only one her trainer had used. I took a snapshot of the mangahigh logo, which then automatically gets uploaded into SMART.

Then, you can by writing anything on screen get SMART to recognise what it is you have scrawled on the screen and they put this as a text. [write anywhere, highlight with mouse pointer on screen, right click (press arrow in top-right) and then click 'recognise'] I found this even works with equations, although not always?!

Next was I could do the same thing with shapes so if I draw a wonky line I could get SMART to recognise it as a straight line. Or draw a circle and then get SMART to draw an accurate one similar in size to the one I drew etc. [right click after selecting the shapes like before].

Lastly, I found how I could get a new background to the slides i.e. a squared grid/dotted grid etc.

 

I then was playing around with the protractor tools and found how you could create an angle from the protractors. just move the green dot round to the required angle then click the green arrow to the side of the protractor and it then places a image of the angle you selected - makes this much easier than I had been doing it (don't ask).

 

So, many thanks to Miss Moore for this tutorial/mini-training session, in return I helped her with her QTS numeracy test (she passed first time)! What a fun half-term we've had!