Numeracy Across the Curriculum (ITT/NQT Session)

On Monday 4th Nov 2013 I delivered a 'numeracy across the curriculum' session for my school's ITTs and NQTs. I was only given 30 minutes for this as the other half of the hour session was delivered by one of my English colleagues on 'Literacy across the curriculum'.

For the session, I used the following Prezi and included a number of ideas for getting numeracy into other subject's lessons. These ideas I will explain further here to support the ITTs and NQTs at my school, and also for anyone else who is interested in those ideas that I presented...I hope they are of use!


*Feel free to flick through the Prezi I created for the session. Throughout the presentation: I referenced the National Numeracy Organisation; briefly explained what numeracy was; gave my colleagues a question to attempt and used this to highlight the different ways students will go about solving the same problem; suggested ways in which you could/should be using numeracy in lessons; provided examples of what could be used to help (data from SIMS and a guide to the levels in Mathematics [from another colleague in my department]) and then presented 12 ideas, all of which I will explain further here (due to having to whizz through them in the session)!*

Idea #1 - Scrabble Tiles
I wrote a blog post on these previously which can be seen by going to --> http://goo.gl/rxCbrK

The Scrabble Tiles can be used in any subject by getting students to find/create key words for the lesson. The numeracy element comes in by getting students to find the sum of the numbers on their tiles. They could then even multiply this by a 'number of the day'. You could get students to estimate the highest total score for a word in your subject, would it differ in other subjects? Why? You could award extra points to students if they come up with a key word for the particular topic you are teaching; you could even award a percentage of their score, for example students could get 10% extra if the word is related to the lesson.

Idea #2 - Use the Dates

This idea is particular useful in subjects like History and English where you have historical dates to refer to or historical figures/people to mention. Get students to work out how many years it has been since certain dates, since the death of historical people. In Geography you could ask students to find the number of years since an event happened. You could get students to work out the age of people who have died by giving them their year of birth/death; you could go as far as working out how old they were in years, months, days, hours etc and could discuss conversions between time here. You could ask students how many days it is until events in the future too. For example, in RE, religious festivals such as Divali, Christmas, Eid, Easter etc. In Design and Technology (or Art) you can get students to create Gantt Charts for their projects and work out the number of days allocated to certain aspects of their projects (this idea came from @kutrahmoore).

Here's an example of a Gantt Chart. These could be used for any subject where an extended project is used - or for revision purposes in terms of creating a revision timetable!






Idea #3 - Pie Chart of the lesson

This could be used to great effect as a plenary activity. Get students to draw a pie chart to sum up the lesson. This activity could be differentiated for students by either keeping the timings simple (i.e. half the lesson I...(half the pie chart), a quarter of the lesson I...(a quarter of the pie chart), an eighth of the lesson I...(a quarter of the pie chart) etc) or getting students to use smaller time intervals, i.e. I spent 4 minutes reflecting on my progress (so a 24 degree slice would be needed to represent this). In order to do this the students will need to divide the 360 degrees in a circle up accordingly; 1 minute of the lesson would be represented by a 6 degree slice of the pie chart.

Idea #4 - Graphing Progress

Again, as a plenary activity in a lesson, or perhaps even kept at the start of every new topic in their exercise books, students can create a suitable graph/chart to 'graph' their progress throughout a topic. Here they can practise their skills of drawing suitable axis, with a consistent scale, and plotting points on their graph across a given time period. You can discuss here with students the criteria that they'll put on their 'progress' axis, whether it be a grade, level or other scale. You could also discuss the benefits of one graph/chart over another.

Idea #5 - Top Trumps

I love top trumps cards and have used them in my lessons to help engage lower ability students in their learning. I have a particular set of 'animal substitution top trumps' cards that I use regularly when teaching the topic. How these can be used in other subjects is by using key people/events and getting students to create their own top trumps cards and assign people/events certain values based on some categories you/they decide upon. For example, in English, you could take all characters from a particular novel (lets say Of Mice and Men) and then get students to rate them on their: likability, nobility, strength etc. Students then assign each character a value for these categories based on what they have learnt about them by reading the novel and then they'd play the game of top trumps in the traditional manner. To make this even more numeracy related you could get students to create sums/calculations instead of just having a single number. This way students would have to first do the sum before deciding whose card was the winner. In Science, this can be done with the Elements, perhaps taking proton number, mass number, number of electrons etc as the categories.

Here's an example of the 'Animal Substitution Top Trumps' I use...

With these top trump cards you give students values for a, b and c to substitute into the expressions on the cards. I change the values throughout the activity (to negatives, decimals, fractions etc) and then award 'rewards'/'house points' for those students holding my favourite cards (the chicken, pig and hedgehog - just in case you were wondering).

You can download this resource on the TES by clicking on --> http://goo.gl/HTzasQ









Idea #6 - Line Ups (range, median etc)

This can be used in a number of subjects where your students have to measure anything. For example, if they need to measure their heights for a given activity, or perhaps their heart rates in PE. Get them to line up in ascending order and then ask the class to work out the range, median and mode of their heights, heart rates, hand spans, weights etc. In History, you could take this idea further to make a timeline out of students for a certain event, say World War I or II, hand out to them key events, or get them to create these themselves, and then get them to line up in ascending order. Then you could calculate time frames between certain events. I can see this working well in PE too for the speeds at which they complete certain events/tasks.

Idea #7 - Venn Diagrams

Venn Diagrams can be used to compare any 2 (or more) things. In English, they can be used to compare characters in a book. In Science, they can be used to compare elements, In PE, they can be used to compare sporting events. In History, they can be used to compare historical events. In Geography, they could be used to compare natural disasters. In Music, they can be used to compare songs/bands/artists. In Food, they can be used to compare recipes. And so on... . Venn Diagrams can be used as either a starter activity or a plenary. They can also be used for revision purposes if asked to 'compare and contrast...'.

I have a resource on the TES I use when introducing Venn Diagrams (or HCF and LCM) that acts as a starter activity to get students to compare...Batman and Superman or...Shrek and Donkey. Download and adapt them here... http://goo.gl/Qh7NuQ

Idea #8 - Calculator Stories
This idea stems from a resource I found on the TES, you can download that resource here --> http://goo.gl/1AJ80j

Here it is too...

As you can see by the image to the left, this involves using a calculator to perform certain calculations to which the answers can be read by turning the calculator upside down in the 'old school' fashion where kids would type 5318008 to spell out 'boobies'!

You can therefore take any piece of text, omit any words you can spell by typing in numbers on a calculator and then turning it upside down, and then create a sum for students to answer to reveal the word in the text. You could get students to create their own or prepare them for them as a short starter activity. This would get them reading some key information for your lesson whilst practising their calculator skills. Check whether your students have their calculators on them at all times or whether you'll need to borrow some; they should all have them with them in our school (as long as they have Mathematics on the same day as your lesson)!?

Idea #9 - Cash Reward/Behaviour Tax
an idea I recently read in @TeacherToolkit's #100ideas book...

The idea is that, perhaps as part of a behaviour management strategy, at the start of a lesson you give all students a certain amount of 'money'. I have some fake £10 notes printed out that I use with ratio activities, or you could use money from board games, print your own etc. Then, throughout the lesson, perhaps when giving out reward points or warnings (in line with your school's behaviour policy), you then issue a reward cash value or 'tax' to the students. This tax could be 10%/25% of the money they have at that time in the lesson, or could just be a determined amount, say £20; a discussion here about which would be the greater amount would be lovely! The students at the end of the lesson with the most money could then 'trade' them in for a small prize or even receive an additional reward point.
I have used raffle tickets in the past in this manner (give them out for good behaviour/work, take them away for poor behaviour) and then draw a ticket at the end of the lesson and that person wins a prize. Here you can discuss the probability of them winning, based on the number of raffle tickets they have!

Idea #10 - Bananas!
I have no idea why this activity is called 'bananas' but I love it nonetheless...it is an idea I found through @TickTockMaths' '59 Starters' resource available on the TES. I blogged about it very recently at --> http://goo.gl/b9h5k1

Here's the idea...and this can be used in any subject...

You basically choose a few categories, related to your subject/lesson, and then pick any letter of the alphabet and get students to think of a key word for each category that begins with the chosen letter of the alphabet. How you get in some numeracy is that one of the categories could be 'a mathematical word' or 'a word to do with numeracy'. Get students to define their chosen word and say how/when they'd use it in their Mathematics lessons.

Idea #11 - Estimate the lesson

Estimation appears naturally in every day life. We estimate the amount of time it's going to take us to complete a journey, the amount of time we need to leave for certain tasks, the amount our shopping is going to amount to when we get to the check-out etc etc. For any subject there will be a number of occasions in your lessons where you can ask students to do some estimating. It could be the amount of time an activity is going to take them, a mark/score they believe they'll get on a test/assessment, the number of years since an event, the amount of an ingredient they will need for a recipe for a given number of people, an amount of liquid to use in an experiment, the length of wood to cut to make an object from etc etc. You could even, when asking students to estimate something related to your lesson, ask them to estimate the answer to a calculation i.e. estimate the answer to 34.98 + 23.1.

Idea #12 - Squares

I love squares. This is perhaps one of my favourite activities to do and there are so many variations of this activity that I probably need to write another blog post/book to explain them all...and even then they'll be other variations found too!

The activity 'squares' is based on a 6 by 6 dotted grid (or other square sized grid of your choosing) and players take it in turn to join two dots together, thus making 1 of the 4 sides of a square. The game continues with the other player taking their turn. Each time a square is created by having all 4 of its' sides complete the person wins that square.
How I make this more 'mathsy' is by having numbers in each 'square' prior to the start of each game, then, when a student wins a square they add that amount to their total. I've also done this when introducing algebra to get students to collect like terms (this would require letters and numbers to be placed in squares at the start).
This can be adapted for any subject by making a mega game of squares on the class whiteboard, or even better, on the IWB. Instead of writing numbers in the squares you can write questions for students to answer. So everytime they win a square they answer the question in the square they have won. The game is all about strategy and problem solving and is an enormous amount of fun!

Additionally, this can be done on a coordinate grid with a set of axes for students to call out coordinates before drawing their line (or their partners' chosen line). For example 'I want to join the points (2, 3) and (3,3). This variation could be used well in Geography when discussing maps and grid references.

Here's an extreme example of a 'squares' grid, write questions/numbers etc in the squares and each time a square is won the students answers that question or adds the number to their score!














So, that's all 12 ideas I presented (briefly) in my numeracy across the curriculum session. I hope it gives you a better idea of each and ultimately, how you can build numeracy into your lessons (if you were struggling to find a way to do so). There are loads of ways you can adapt these ideas to suit your subject/students/lesson etc I hope I've given enough examples for specific subjects? If you try anything out do let me know by commenting below or tweeting me at @mrprcollins.

Top 10 Tips for NQTs, PGCEs and ITTs

Over the past few weeks there have been plenty of blogs providing tips and advice for new teachers starting their 1st roles this year. It got me thinking about what my 'top 10' tips would be to perhaps my former GTP/NQT self and what would be useful to know before starting these training years. So, under no illusions that I'll be able to do a better job than the likes of the already written advice to trainee teachers, here are my two pennies worth (in no particular order)...

1) Find out how you work best and stick to it

This is a bit of a strange one to start off with but essentially finding a routine that suits you is vital to surviving the sheer amount of paperwork you'll have to deal with over the course of the year. Some schools may expect certain planning requirements - on one of my placements I was expected to hand in lesson plans 24hrs in advance of the lesson. This for me didn't work as I got into the habit of pretty much planning my lessons as I went; I wouldn't plan a class' lesson until their last one had been taught. I found that preparing lessons too far in advance caused me to forget what I had previously planned and it was no longer fresh in my head.
There will also be times where you'll be invited/asked/required to joint plan with other colleagues, it could be that they share a similar group to you or are teaching the same topic. This is something that I've personally found more time consuming than anything else and would much rather plan certain lessons individually and share.
Essentially, whatever works for you, stick to it and don't be afraid to do what's best for you. Over the last two years I very much left school as soon as any after school commitments were fulfilled and I did my work at home. I was pretty much the only teacher in my department that did this and everyone else stayed at school until 6pm+ planning their lessons for the next day/week. I felt bad in the first few weeks for looking like I was leaving ASAP and going home, but they soon came to see that I must have been doing just as much work at home as I would have been at school. Whatever works for you is best!

2) Have 3-4 'go to' starter/plenary activities

By having a number of 'go to' starters and plenaries your planning time will be shortened considerably. I'm guilty of jumping on board of every new starter idea I see on Twitter/TES and usually get creating new resources as soon as I see them and try them out the next day. However, I have a set of activities that I reuse on a regular basis; I 'swap' the activities around between classes and lessons so the activities do not get 'stale' with the students. These activities help you when you get stuck for ideas for lessons, you'll get to refine your skills at delivering them and your students may even like the 'routineness' of having similar activities.

3) Set up individual class folders in your school e-mail Inbox

The amount of e-mails sent round schools on a daily basis is ridiculous. You'll be sent e-mails from your house team, year team, department, NQT/PGCE trainee manager, your mentor, your assessor, all staff e-mails and e-mails from maintenance/reception asking if someone has lost a blue pen with a cat sticker on it. The best way I've found to 'manage' all of these e-mails is by having class folders set up in your Inbox. This way, any important e-mails that get sent from your students, or from other staff requesting information on your students, can be added to the individual class folder and found easier at a later date. I also have a folder for 'Mathematics' (any departmental resources/info), 'NQT/PGCE' (training dates and meetings) and one for your form too. I also get into the habit of, if I'm sat at my desk when the e-mails come in and I don't need them, deleting them there and then. I also have my school's e-mails set up on my iPhone so I can keep track of them at home without logging in externally on my computer - beware --> if you do this you will be constantly checking them, it works for me, but is it something you actually want?

4) Get feedback from your students on you and your lessons

Some of the most useful feedback I've had over my training years has been from my students. You'll find they are brutally honest at times and tell you exactly as they see it. If something isn't right they'll usually make this known to you. This, for the weak hearted can be shattering to your self esteem, but when approached in the right way you can use the feedback to improve your teaching and your students' learning. How I gather the feedback is by using a quick, simple survey on www.surveymonkey.com. I set up a short (7-10 questions) and send it round to my classes via e-mail to do for 'homework'. I make all responses random and include a question 'anything else you'd like to comment on'. I keep them random to try and get as much honesty out of my students as possible. I'd ask them things such as: do they like where they are sat, do they feel they get enough 'teacher time' in class, what activities do they like best, is there anything you particularly have/haven't liked so far this year, do you feel you are making progress in Mathematics, what can Mr Collins do to help you improve further etc.
Don't be afraid of what might come back; if it's negative - do something about it!

5) Reinforce your expectations regularly

I would recommend reinforcing your classroom expectations (in line with your school's behaviour policy) after every half-term. Do this with EVERY class, regardless of whether there your golden top set or the dreaded set 5 class. It'll make a massive difference in terms of the consistency of the behaviour you get in class. I found this out the hard way in the 2nd half of my 1st term with a few classes and it was tricky having to stamp my authority again in the new year. I've heard before that 'once you've lost them it's hard to get them back'. This is true, not impossible, but true.
I've attended a fair few training sessions on behaviour management over the past 4 years or so (including the time when I worked as a cover supervisor) and the one thing that kept coming up was to have your expectations on display in your room. These need to be in a prominent area of your room, that all students can see, and can be used on a daily basis to refer too. Go through these expectations at the very start of the year and ask if any students have any problems with them, if so discuss and re-empthasise why the rule stands, if not bring the fact that there were no issues with them up when a student tests the boundaries.

6) Record details of ALL meetings/duties

There will be loads of meetings throughout the year. There will be house/year/department meetings that all staff will be required to do. On top of that you'll have NQT/PGCE/ITT meetings and then you'll have duties to do to. When push comes to shove, the duties get easily forgotten and you'll get to the end of the day and will suddenly realise you forgot to stand in the playground for 25 minutes. However, the SLT member that randomly checks throughout the year that everyone is where they're supposed to be won't forget! They are important and you don't want a naughty e-mail sent to you asking where you were! Meetings will need to be recorded in your planner and the duration of them too. There's nothing worse than turning up to (what you believe to be) an hour meeting to be told that it's actually 2 hours. I suppose it's all about being mega organised!

7) Do something extra out of the ordinary

This to a lot of people will sound ridiculous given the 'normal' workload that is expected being more than enough to manage during your training years. However, by doing something extra out of the ordinary at your school you will gain the attention of your peers and your students and they will appreciate it. The kind of thing I am talking about doesn't have to be radical or completely insane - I don't mean setting up an 'extreme ironing club' (my University had one of these, and no...I wasn't a member). I set up a TeachMeet at my school last year and although it was a lot of extra work and caused me to liaise with a lot of other members of staff it was well worth it to see what the staff that attended got out of the evening. Other suggestions could be setting up a lunchtime/after school club that hasn't been run before, setting up a class blog (bear in mind safeguarding and child protection) or a blog for a school trip (I did this for our Spanish trip and it was very successful). It could even be organising a car boot sale or fete for the local community. Whatever it is you do, get help doing it and put yourself out there!

8) Communicate with parents and the local community

Parent's evening, in my opinion, is not the first time you should have contact with your students' parents. Ring them (especially your form groups' parents) at the start of the year to introduce yourself. You might be lucky enough to have a 'back to school' parents meeting in the first few weeks - get e-mail addresses from them to provide another means of contacting them. I've found that when you try to ring parents (during the school day) 9 times out of 10 they'll be at work or out. You leave a message and then rarely do these get returned and you end up forgetting what it was you were calling about in the first place. So I've found e-mailing is more successful. Something I wanted to do this year was use www.remind101.com to increase parental engagement, but it's not available in the UK, damn!
An extension to parents is the local community. Like it or not, when in your local area, regardless of what time of day it is or what day of the week, you are a teacher. If you get seen by parents, students or members of the community that serve your school (I'm mainly thinking the local newsagent owner or petrol station staff where you fill up on the way to work) speak to them. Be nice, smile and refer to them by name (if you can remember), you'll be surprised at how much it means to students that you know who they are still outside of school! Above all though...BE POSITIVE. There's nothing worse than moaning about your day or what you have to come that day; you don't want to be creating a negative impression of your school, its students and staff. You'll be surprised how quickly news spreads across your local community and the little 'hellos', 'how are yous' and 'thank yous' go a long way.

9) Cherish your TAs/LSAs

Other than your students these are the most important people in your school - your teaching assistants or learning support assistants (whatever they are called at your school). They have the ability to provide you with an unparallelled amount of support with your students, and mostly your most difficult students. Get to know them, what they like/don't like etc and get them involved in your lessons. This starts before the lesson if possible - show them your lesson plans or talk to them about what you intend to do and what you'd like them to do to help you out. Ask them if they have any suggestions, anything they've seen in another class/school etc. If you're getting the students to do a competitive task, add your TA/LSA to the mix - your students will love trying to beat their score/performance. Use them to model tasks to be done in class and call on them to be the 'volunteer' for the lessons examples. Of course, do so with their blessing - if you know they don't really want to be involved that much and they'd much rather just go and support your students when they're working then give them this choice.
Lastly, thank them regularly. In fact after every lesson. Oh...and get them some chocolates/wine (whatever they like) at Christmas and the end of term - they deserve it.

10) Be there for your students through their tough times

Now this last one may sound obvious as there would be no point in you wanting to teach if you didn't care about the students you teach, but I'll tell you why I've included this...

Regardless of all the training sessions and meetings you'll have to prepare you for your teaching career nothing can prepare you for the 'human' side of the job. Nothing can prepare you for the death of one of your students. Nothing can prepare you for dealing with your students lives and difficulties they face on a daily basis. Nothing can prepare you for these situations. So...all you can do is be there for your students. Let them know you are there if they need you and offer the support you can. Obviously here we have to remember all the child protection training on disclosing information and not being able to keep students 'secrets', but the role of a teacher includes caring for your students. If you know of a student having difficulties at home or at school, whatever it is, be aware of it and, without directly bringing the situation up, be there. A lot of students won't want to talk about things that are troubling them, but will want to talk to someone about anything else, whether it be how many planes of symmetry a cube has or why Arsenal still haven't bought any players in the transfer window!
They'll appreciate you being the 'relief' from their problems, however short that 'relief' may be.


So, that's my top 10 'tips'. I hope they are useful to someone out there besides me. Best of luck to all those about to start their teaching careers, or those starting new roles or new schools - here's to a great year.

Probability Lesson & NQT Final Assessment

For my official, and final, NQT observation/assessment I was told that I would be observed on May 10th and that my NQT assessor could come into any of my 4 lessons I had on that day. This meant that I spent a fair amount of time the weekend before ensuring that my lessons were planned and I had all my resources ready to go regardless of what lesson my assessor would be popping in.

A quick tip for any NQT/PGCE/ITT starting in September...for any official observation make sure you give your assessor/observing everything they could possibly need for that lesson. This includes lesson plan, seating plan, class list, assessment results or scans of your mark book and copies of all the resources you'd be using that lessons. This way the see that you've clearly prepared for the lesson, have thought about what they need to see and they then should be able to see previous class results and link these to your lesson objectives and context for the lesson being observed. Also, have the class' books handy to show progression over time and marking - this all goes down well too!

On the day, I e-mailed my assessor just to say I looked forward to seeing them at some point that day (a gentle reminder). I then received a reply saying that the plan was for them to come and see me P2 (year 7). P2 came and went and I still hadn't seen my assessor. P3 was when they actually turned up and this lesson was with Year 8. A lesson on probability following their recent assessments. I don't know at this point if the statement of what lesson they'd be coming in was a 'test' of some sort, or whether it was just a matter of circumstance...I'm inclined to believe the latter.

Anyway, the lesson that was observed...I received an 'outstanding' grading for the lesson and so I thought it was worth sharing, and for my own personal teaching reflecting on and remembering for the future.

I knew the lesson I would be doing with this class (set 5 year 8) would be on probability following their recent assessment where the probability questions were not done particularly well - so I wanted to address this area of weakness. Now, even in my short time as a Mathematics teacher, I have used many different ideas/activities when teaching the topic of probability and its one of those topics that Mathematics teachers enjoy teaching in all manner of different ways. In the past I've done the Monty Hall problem, the horse race, watched Derren Brown's television shows, done a 'Maths Vegas' themed lesson and even observed other teachers using 'gambling' as a resource by 'betting' (fake 'money') on 'wacky races'. I decided to keep things a bit simpler this time round as I wanted my students to be comfortable with the vocabulary used in Probability and mainly, how to write a probability.

Here's my 5 Min Mathematics Lesson Plan for the observation (yes, this was perfectly acceptable for my final NQT lesson observation)...

This lesson plan was adapted by @ilovemathsgames from @TeacherToolkit's original 5 Min Lesson Plan. Both can be found on their respective Twitter pages/tweets and on the TES.

http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/The-5-Minute-Lesson-Plan-by-TeacherToolkit-6170564/











Before the lesson started I set out my classroom so that all of my 9 students (yes, I only had 9 students in my set 5 year 8 class) were sat around a single grouped set of tables. I then laid out the cheap paper tablecloths I got as part of my experimentation with #poundlandpedagogy. My aim with this was that the students would write on the table cloths throughout the lesson, rather than in their exercise books. The table (and cloth) were then added to with whiteboard pens and felt tip pens for the kids to use throughout the lesson.

The lesson started with an image of the answer/s to one page of their recent assessment (putting the lesson in context) with the particular question I wanted to address, the probability question, circled.

In addition to the image on the board I then started to introduce the lesson to the students as they got sat down. I showed them a bag, in which there were 11 multilink cubes of various colours and 1 'fruitella' sweet. I asked the students to write down any key words as they were said throughout the 1st task (and lesson on the whole). I then started to ask students to pick at random, from the bag a multilink cube. At this point they had no idea what was in the bag or what colours the cubes were, how many cubes there were etc. The point of this was to see if they could come up with an estimate for how many of each colour there were based on each students' picked item/cube. I went round the table after each student asking questions such as 'what do you think the chance/likelihood/probability is of that colour coming up?', 'is that colour more or less likely than another?', 'do you think the probability of that colour being picked is more than 1 in 2?' why? why not? etc.

After each student had had a go, and none of them had picked the sweet, I revealed to them all the contents of the bag. Throughout the task they had been writing down, on the table cloth/table the results of each student's picks. We then compared, after a brief moment of shock at the fact there was a sweet in the bag, the results with the actual items in the bag. Here I checked their understanding of how we express probabilities by asking what the probability was of each colour coming up. I then checked this further by going through 2 slides on my notebook file I created for the lesson...

 As you can see I checked here whether the class were able to express a probability as a fraction, revealing the convention when a few struggled. We also discussed here that probabilities of as single event occurring add to 1.

 To provide a link into the main activity I then did a similar thing with a dice rather than a bag of marbles to show that regardless of the event the conventions stay the same in terms of how we express probabilities. The dice on this slide is an interactive tool that when clicked 'rolls' the dice to generate a number - really useful. I got this off the TES somewhere but can't remember the particular resource. If it's yours let me know so I can link to it!

After this checking (mini plenary if you like) I set up the main activity by revealing the lesson objectives, showing what we had already covered and what we were going to look at next. I then explained the main task and gave out the dice and counters for the class to use. The main task consisted of each student individually rolling 2 dice. The numbers rolled on each dice would then determine which of 3 counters they would move up a space on the strips of paper they were given. If they rolled two even numbers one of the markers would move, two odd numbers a different counter and if one was odd and one was even they were to move the other (and final) counter. The winner was the one that got to the final 'square' on their strips. Here's the slide and image of the strips they were given to use...

The instructions, which some of the students found tricky to understand 1st time, were left on the board and reinforced to those that needed it. I worked with one student as I didn't have my LSA with me that lesson and they needed a bit of further support to get rolling!
There was an extension on the board too for those that finished quicker than others, which 2 or 3 of them got onto after being reminded what a square number was and what a prime number was. At this point I referred these students to the prime numbers display they had done earlier in the year (posters of the 1st 10 or so prime numbers).

This was the 'strip' of paper the students were given to place and move their markers up and down.

After the activity was done and each student had found a winner, which they wrote down on the table cloth, I went through our class results and then posed the question to the class 'why do you think this happened?'. I took a bunch of responses to the class and then drew up a sample space diagram to illustrate why it had happened.

We discussed the 'liklihood' of each counter being moved and then moved on.








The 2nd main activity involved rolling dice again. This time, I gave each student a sheet with numbers 1-36 written on them in a grid. I gave each student 10 markers to place on any of the numbered squares in the grid and told them not to show their partner. They could put more than 1 marker on a square, but no more than 3 on any one square. This was something that needed explaining a few times. I kept the instructions on the board too whilst the activity went on. I told the class that I would be rolling two dice and then multiplying the numbers that came up. If they had a marker on this number they would then take it off. The person with the most markers left on their sheets at the end would be the winner.

This is what their grids looked like. After the rules had been explained the students started to ask questions based on what they had just learnt about the dice and the probabilities of certain numbers coming up. We had a brief discussion of each question (without spoiling the outcome of the activity) before then starting to roll some numbers. At the end of the task I asked the students to now place their counters a 2nd time based on the squares they thought were best to put markers on (i.e. those that couldn't come up based on the rules of the game). This checked their understanding of the task and of the probability of certain numbers coming up, or not.

Finally, the plenary...

I really like these types of plenaries as they really do highlight who has grasped the lesson and who hasn't. They were each asked to write down, on the table cloth again, an outcome to which the answer was on the board. One by one I then went round the students asking for them to read out their outcome (a bit of literacy here) i.e. 'tomorrow will be a Saturday', 'the probability of rolling a 6 on a dice' and then asked another student to state what the probability was of that student's outcome using the probabilities and key words on the board. This was also differentiated by ability by the probabilities that were chosen. Most chose the worded probabilities like 'impossible' and 'evens', but there were a few at least that used the fractions to express their outcome (and correctly so).

Here's how the table looked at the end of the lesson...

As you can see, lots of key words written over the table. My explanation of '1 out of 12' and how this is written too with the 'out of' being the line between the numerator and denominator of a fraction...what is this line called? Is it called something? I think I have heard it referred as something other than a 'line' before? Answers on a postcard please (comment below).

The feedback I received from my assessor was really positive as my final assessment showed. His only 'concern' was the writing on the tables. One student had to write on the table as the cloth didn't stretch right the way over the grouped tables. I had written on the tables in the past with the class as it rubs off easily (I checked beforehand). My assessor's concern was that students, if allowed to draw on the tables in my lesson, could go to another classroom and do the same, assuming it was ok.
In an ideal world we'd all have whiteboard paint over our desks, on the walls etc to create a truly interactive environment. I have seen 'white rooms' before in libraries and universities where students can literally write on the walls, floor, ceiling, tables, chairs etc. All of which can be rubbed off and reused. Something for the future perhaps.



So, that's that. I got that 'buzz' throughout the lesson that tells me that everything is linking and going as I had envisaged; this doesn't always happen! The class were working fantastically throughout the lesson and were asking questions throughout. This was not the 'norm' with the class by any means and at times they had been difficult to teach/control. This lesson (and plenty of others) however, they were fantastic. I feel they got a lot from the lesson and just hope that they remember it for the future; retention is a key problem with the class.

I will use this 'format' of lesson in the future with small lower ability groups and may even use it with larger class sizes, students in groups with perhaps a different probability task to complete for each group. I may even do it with 'home' and 'expert' groups to get students moving round the room after each task to discuss their findings with other groups who hadn't seen/done certain tasks.

I hope my experience of my assessment will help others, and that ideas can be taken from the lesson I did with my year 8 class. It was one of the most enjoyable lessons I had with the class and one of the lessons that stands out from my NQT year (lucky timing on my behalf here).

Musical Chairs

Throughout the year I have experimented with many different seating layouts in my classroom, which I revelled having this year. Each of the different layouts had their own purposes depending on what I was intending on doing with certain classes at certain stages throughout the year. I'm sure everyone has their own particular favourite seating layout. Personally, I still don't think I've found a 'perfect' arrangement. There are pros and cons to each, but I ideally think that your seating layout should fit the purpose of the lesson and in an ideal word we'd all have a set of magical Maths trolls that would come out between each lesson changeover and move the furniture accordingly.

Now, for many teachers I'm sure space in their classroom is a major issue in terms of whether there is literally enough space to have the tables and chairs spread out in groups or in rows. One problem I may face next year, when moving back to the school I was a cover supervisor at (very excited by the way), is that my room isn't as big as the one I've enjoyed this year and has a weird 'side room' within the room. There's currently a load of filing cabinets in this space, but I'm hoping to clear this area for some sort of 'TA table' where my LSAs/TAs can work with small groups as directed/discussed.

I'm sure I'll find a way of rearranging the furniture such as I have this year, but for now let's see the different layouts I've used this year. You'll probably see gradual changes in my room displays too, throughout the pictures. I tried to change things and mix things up as much as I could this year. Mainly due to wanting to keep my students on their toes, give them a stimulating environment to work in and ensure they had that wonderment of what was going to happen in their Mathematics lesson that day; what the room would look like, would they be doing group work etc etc.

Start of the Year:

 

To start the year off I kept it simple...rows! I kept a walk through in between the desks for me to easily move up and down the classroom. On the odd occasion I'd use the back of the classroom (quite a big area) to teach here too, or use the back wall display to refer to something another class had produced (or remind a class of what they had done previously).

 

The advantage of the rows at the start of the year was that it enabled me to set out my stall. Rows are great for maintaining discipline and setting out the boundaries. All students are facing the front and so have no excuses for not looking towards the front when expected. It is easy to see those that have turned round to chat to those behind them. I found that it was also good when seating my SEN students at the start of the year and getting to know how much/little support they would need early on. These students were either sat on the front row or on the ends of the rows, easily accessible via the gap going down the middle.

 

The negatives of this layout are that I found certain students, depending on where they were sat, did not get as much of my attention as perhaps other students did that were easier to get to. The students that are sat on the ends of the rows nearest the walls/windows, especially in the middle of the classroom where those that were just physically hard to get to without having to squeeze past chairs. A major downfall for me was also that, as many of my classes were lower sets they only contained a maximum of 12 students. These students found it hard to concentrate and would need sitting with and extra support to understand their work. The rows made it hard for my LSAs and I to easily get round them all and sit next to them to support them if a row was 'full'.

So, I felt a change was needed.

 

Before the actual 'change' from rows I did experiment by moving the desks into other arrangements when I was doing group based tasks that I didn't think rows really complimented. Here are a few, 'one off' arrangements that I did for those lessons where I felt rows were not suitable...

 

 

What I would call the 'as exam-style as I can get' layout. This was used when I needed the classes to work in exam-style conditions. This mainly occurred when doing the termly assessments. However, this layout was also good for paired work, especially when the tasks were quite competitive between pairings.

 

'Circle Time'. I used this layout with my Year 7s a few times as I liked the way we could discuss certain things together. One particular lesson involved looking at sequences. Another, collecting like terms.

 

After the rows (with some dispersed 'one-off' layouts) I went to a 'spine' layout...

 

 

The 'spine' layout was possibly the least successful layout for me personally. Although, another teacher that used my room when I was free said that they really liked it and was a bit disappointed when I changed it.

Note to any NQT/ITT (or teacher for that matter) whose room gets used by other members of staff when you're not teaching in there...make sure you make those members of staff that teach in your room aware of any changes to the seating layout! Some members of staff will get a bit 'perturbed', shall we say, of constant unannounced changes, others will adopt an attitude of 'it's your room, do what you like with it'. Know your colleagues!

What I was hoping to do with this layout was to have a layout that allowed the ability to work in groups at the same time of everyone being able to face the front and still act as if they were in 'rows'. However, what I found was that there were far too many distractions for my larger classes. Not only could they see the person sat next to them, and the other pair that were linked to their table, but they were also able to see over to the other side of the room. This led to some silly behaviour at times with the more difficult students. There was a lesson where the poor student sat on the back right's bag ended up under the table at the front left in a game I'll call 'pass the parcel whilst Collins' back is turned'. My smaller classes (size wise, not height wise) did benefit from this layout however, as my LSAs and I were able to support students easier and were able to teach the students in smaller groups, which at this point in the year was becoming far more important as it became evident quite quickly that they, as a group, did not have the attention span nor concentration to be taught 'as a class'. Teaching in groups was how I found best to teach my lower sets - with the much needed support from my amazing LSAs (who I briefed at the start of each lesson/ beforehand if possible).

 

So, this 'half way house' just wasn't good enough and so having tried grouped seating when doing group work in the odd lesson here and there I decided to go the whole hog and change the seating layout to 'groups'...

 

 

 

The 'groups' consisted of 5 grouped desks, which each sat 6 students. There was then a single table for 2 students to sit on that I had at the back of the room. The difference this layout had on my set 5 classes was just what I needed. It allowed me to work with one table of 6, my LSA/s to work with the other table of 6 and then we'd swap over for me to check understanding of the other table/teach them whilst my LSAs went and supported the other table with the work they had just been taught. This worked well for these classes (of which there were 3). It may not seem like the most practical way of doing things, and yes it did mean a lot of repeating what I had said on a number of occasions. But, what it did do, is for me to easily see where everyone was with the work, move those students on faster that were capable to do so and give further support to those that were struggling. It meant I could sit students on either of the tables based on where they had got to in previous lessons and there was a good element of competition between the groups when the task allowed it.

The larger groups didn't lose out either. My classes where I had 32 students remained working well as they had done. From the dispersed group work lessons at the start of the year, and from the feedback my survey monkey survey provided me, my classes liked doing group work activities. My 'exam classes' were now sat based on their mock grades so I had students of similar ability working together, allowing me to differentiate class activities more easily. I even used the front table in my top set year 9 class as the table for my G&T students. They were all sat on this table, right under the class board, which allowed me to go through trickier problems/concepts as and when they finished the main class tasks. I did of course invite others that had finished elsewhere to join in the discussions as and when this happened, rather than singling out the front table as being the most able.

Luckily, the room space allowed there to be a lot of room still between desks and it was much easier to ensure I got round each student in the class, more so than I was able to do (subconsciously anyway) with the 'rows'.

 

Finally, towards the end of the year, I thought I'd go completely bonkers and combine the two main layouts ('groups' and 'rows')...

 

 

Now, I feel I need to give this a bit more of a go next year, as I see potential here. Half the class in 'rows' the other half in 'groups'. This allowed me to do the best of both worlds in terms of my set 5 classes could still work on 2 of the grouped tables, and we ignored the 'rows' half of the class, unless of course I needed to use this space for naughty students! The larger classes were slightly tweaked in terms of who worked best on groups and those students who perhaps worked better individually and preferred a bit more quiet to just get on with their work. Knowing my students helped a lot here.

As I've mentioned above, I think I may need to try this out this coming school year to really examine the benefits of it. Possibly at a time of year where the activities I'd be doing aren't so much 'end of term'.

 

A few things to note about changing the layout of your room:

 

Make sure their is a purpose for doing it, and not just because you got bored in a free period.

Be aware of any students with SEN (particularly ASD) as they will need to be given prior warning of the change and will need to know where 'their' seat is/will be.

You'll need to change your seating plans, this will take a bit of time to change if it's an electronic version, easier if you just take a photo and write over it.

Let other staff know if/when you're going to change it.

Don't change your expectations just because the seating changes. Reinforce your classroom rules in the first lesson of each new layout.

Where will you sit your most 'tricky' students? At one point in the year I thought it'd be a good idea to sit my 'trickiest' 2 students together, at the back of the class. My reasoning being that they'd distract less students all that way back their...WRONG! This didn't work, and neither did they!

Where are your LSA/TAs going to sit? Get their opinion on the new layout/s.

Tell the class why you've changed the layout and their seating positions - they'll feel as if they've been involved in the process rather than just told what to do with no explanation!

 

If anyone has a particular favourite layout that they've used, be it one I've used this year or one I'm yet to experiment with I'd love to hear about it. Comment below or tweet me @mrprcollins.

 

Term 3 of my NQT year - an insight for future NQTs/ITTs

It seems like ages since I last had some time to sit down and write any sort of blog post. In fact, it's been since the start of May that I've had this luxury when I blogged about organising and hosting a TeachMeet at my current school. Since then, a whole host of things have taken place and needed doing that have taken priority over being able to take some time to write about all the things I have been using/doing in my classroom.

So, having finally found an hour or so to sit down and reflect on what has been an extremely busy 3rd (and final) term of my NQT year I thought it'd be good to give those that are about to start their initial teacher training or NQT year an insight into what they could experience towards the later end of their training years. Obviously nobody's experience will be the same as another's, and this year has been completely different to the end of my GTP year, but there are similar things that will crop up regardless of what school you train/work in.

The main difference in my NQT year from my GTP year has been the pressure of having a GCSE class to prepare for their examinations. Last year, I shared a bottom set Y11 group, all of whom got their C grades (bar 2 students), but this year I was solely responsible for a 2nd set Y10 class, a bottom set Y10 class  and a shared bottom set Y11 class. So, with this, came a lot of revision focused lessons, past paper practice, morning revision sessions, regular revision sessions after school and the general 'pressure' that surrounds you and your classes when trying to not only cover the content of the examinations, but also provide timely feedback so your students know where they are with the exam content and what they need to still work on.
The difference between the classes was massive in terms of their readiness for the examinations and my 2nd set Y10 class were fantastic in terms of the preparations they were making independent of our lessons. In the lead up to the examinations I had half the class (at least) stay behind after school once a week (at least) to go over past questions, topics they didn't understand and things they needed to clear up. I found that my class didn't seem to attend the department's revision sessions after school each week and so decided to set up a revision session after school specifically for them. I provided biscuits to entice the more reluctant students in the group to turn up and I was really pleased with the attendance at these sessions. I hope that the work and effort put in here will reflect in their grades come August when they open up their envelopes.
The other Y10 class were barely ready for the examinations and will do well to get a D grade on the examinations. However, some of them do stand a chance at this. They'll probably sit the same examinations in November or be put into a linear examination (currently they've been doing the Edexcel linked pair pilot [Methods] exams). This class have taken up a lot of time purely by having to constantly think of what I was going to try and teach them and what they'd actually respond well to. They were a difficult class to teach and took up a lot of time trying to differentiate activities accordingly and get the most out of them as possible.

Aside from the Y10 examinations, and preparation for these examinations, a lot of my time was spent sorting out my NQT year and all the elements of this. This included my NQT final assessment observation, the NQT moderation visit we had and the ongoing collection and notation of evidence for the standards. I had 3 (termly) assessments during my NQT year and the final assessment was to take place on a given day and I was told that my assessor would come in to any lesson on that day. Now, I was able to rule out 1 of the lessons as I knew they would be teaching at the same time (and cover was an issue that would not be added to), but the rest all had to be planned and prepared for in the same fashion I would normally, with an added element of 'Ooo...I'm being observed'!  On the day of the assessment I sent my assessor an e-mail to remind them of the lessons I would be teaching that day to which I had a reply that they'd be in to observe me P2 (Y7). So, this lesson I spent the entire time watching the class door awaiting their arrival...nothing happened! So, it got to P3 and still no sign, until halfway through the lesson my assessor turned up to observe the lesson. This, if anything, was better than if they had turned up P2 as the class I had P3, although it was one of my trickiest bottom set Y8 groups, were working fantastically well, were engaged throughout and was one of the most enjoyable lessons we'd had all year - I was a bit lucky in this respect! The lesson was graded 'outstanding' and that, apart from the official form filling etc, was that, for my NQT year.

The biggest time consumer outside of the classroom had to be the end of year reports and end of year assessments. Now, last year I had to do all these things, but as I had only 3-4 classes this didn't seem too much of a chore. I also didn't have a tutor group's reports to do as I shared a form with the Head of English and she was awesome in taking this responsibility. So this year came as a bit of a shock as I had 8 classes worth of reports to do...and my tutor group's comments.
Each of the reports took a good 3 and a half hours + to do if they were a class of 30 odd. My smaller classes (luckily I had a few of these) only took a couple of hours to do. The tutor comments for my form took up about 3 hours due to having to read through their comments from other subjects before writing my general comment about their report and also how they'd been in form time. In addition to the reports, there were also all the end of year assessments for my Y7-9 classes. These all took a while to mark and then plan effective feedback for, which therefore didn't leave much time for anything else.

In Term 3 there were then a lot of other more 'minor' things that took up time like:

organising Sports Day with the form group - this is a nightmare...avoiding clashes, making sure students weren't doing too many events, making sure all students were taking part, making sure the students knew what they were doing and at what times, getting students to do the least popular events etc

taking part in the fortnightly NQT sessions and those sessions provided externally that caused cover to be set up for the classes I'd miss on those days

for our Enrichment week (w/beg 15th Jul) I'm going to Spain with half of the Y8s and we had a meeting with parents to inform them about the trip and answer any questions

as part of our House duties we were asked to do the interviews for the new house captains after the Y11s left having completed their examinations

I was part of the teachers chosen in our department to run a Y6 --> Y7 induction session for 2 of the form groups entering the school in September

All of the above was in addition to the ongoing lesson planning, marking, assessments, meetings etc that you'd expect from any other teaching week.

Outside of school it's been a busy couple of months too, with the ongoing TES resource reviews, moving house and DJing at weddings and Leavers' Balls. All of this has had to squeeze into the weekly routines that I try to get in place and so it's no wonder that I've not been able to get on here and share my ideas etc.
However, there is now only 1 'teaching week' left at my current school, then it's our 'Enrichment Week' where I'm in Spain with Y8 and then...HELLO Summer!

It has definitely been a busy year, especially the final term of the year, and it has been as enjoyable as it has been hectic. Keeping on top of everything has been the main challenge, as well as trying to ensure that the quality of my lessons didn't suffer with the other duties/responsibilities needing fulfilling at the same time. The increase in the timetable time is the main thing to change in your NQt year and I'm assuming this will be one of the main differences next year when I'll have a 100% timetable as an NQT +1.

If I could say anything to myself prior to having started this year it would have been to do my reports as soon as they were available for writing. I managed to do this to a certain extent, but still found myself trying to get the tutor comments done with a day or so to spare. I'd also be a bit firmer at the start of the year with classes than I perhaps was this year. I don't think this had too much of a detrimental effect, but the classes could have been a bit sharper/tighter behaviour wise a bit sooner in the year. All of the experience I have gained from this year I will take to my 'new' school in September, which I am thoroughly looking forward to.

I'll be blogging about all of the lesson ideas/activities I have used over the past term in the next couple of weeks. So watch this space!

Displays for Learning

This week I was lucky enough to be able to visit one of the other local secondary schools to my school and take part in a NQT training morning. Part of the morning involved us taking a 'learning walk' around the school. We were 'toured' round by one of the 6th formers and saw lots of great lessons taking place.
Prior to the 'learning walks' taking place we were asked to look out for: assessment; differentiation and 'displays for learning'. The latter was one I was quite interested in as I like to think I present my classroom in an engaging way to my students and often change my displays dependant on my students' work etc. The school had recently changed all of its displays too and so there were lots of brand new displays on show.

As I walked round I was trying to take in all the ideas that the teachers were using. There were rooms where they had a 'Twitter board', much like the one I have in my classroom. Some rooms used the magic whiteboards (www.magicwhiteboard.co.uk) that I use in my room. We saw classroom doors that had speech bubbles on them with quotes or questions for students to be thinking about (presumably whilst queueing for the class in the corridor. The most impressive displays I saw were in MFL and I asked our tour guide if I could take some photos and here they are...

 Being the massive geek that I am it is easy to see why I chose to take pictures of these particular displays...

Angry Birds!

 Space Invaders!

 Pacman!

Spiderman!












Clearly a lot of time and effort have gone into these displays and they have given me ideas for future displays I can create in my own classroom!

Assessing and building on students prior knowledge (#blogsync)

Last month saw the very first #blogsync. If you missed it - check out my first entry on 'The Universal Panacea - Time' here.

This month's #blogsync is centred around classroom practice and all the blog posts are aimed at 'a teaching and learning strategy intended to elicit the highest levels of student motivation in my subject'. For this month's #blogsync I have chosen to discuss assessing and building on students prior knowledge. The reasons for me doing this is that I feel it is one of the most important things we do as teachers, as if we don't properly assess students prior knowledge we'll just end up going over old ground - over and over again; students learning nothing new.
Also, a secondary reason for me doing this topic is that as part of being an NQT one of the standards I have to collate evidence against is standard 2 'promote good progress and outcomes of pupils' of which one of the bullet points is 'be aware of pupils' capabilities and their prior knowledge, and plan teaching to build on these'. So, it has been my aim, this past half term, to focus my teaching on this bullet point, and in turn, write this post and reflect on my ability to do this in my lessons and how it has impacted on those lessons and my students' progress.

This will be just one of the posts in the series of blog posts on the topic above (in bold), to see the rest go to http://share.edutronic.net/.

So, when I was choosing my topic for this month's #blogsync I was trying to think of how I get students motivated in my subject (Mathematics) and there were a number of ways I achieve this. However, I can have the most practical of activities, put the lesson in a context my students will relate to, use as much ICT and music as I desire but none of that would matter if what I was teaching the students was something they'd done before. And so it seemed to me that the best way of me eliciting the highest levels of student motivation was to pitch the lesson right in the first place - the only way of doing this...checking what they already know and then building upon it!

I see Mathematics as a set of building blocks; blocks that can be built upon, but without the basics, can often fall apart leading to students easily forgetting concepts, or even whole topics. I like the layered approach you can often work with in Mathematics in terms of you know how to do 'x' and so we can now use 'x' to do 'y'. Sure, some topics can be taught as 'one off' lessons, but the majority involve using something you'd learnt previously to access a new problem.
There are however, those topics in Mathematics that students fail to grasp throughout their schooling that inevitably have to be taught year after year, or at least revised with classes. This, I believe, should happen in the 'assessing students prior knowledge' part of teaching any topic. Ideally students will be presented with something they should have learnt before, tested on it, and then moved on to a new problem using their prior knowledge. It's at this point I, as a teacher, would see where the class were at and then teach my lesson accordingly. If this meant going over gaps in knowledge or covering misconceptions the students may have then great, if it means that all students are ready to move on, even better.

So, in order to show how I have assessed my students prior knowledge, what I did with it and what affect it had on the lesson and my students' learning I will talk about 3 different lessons (and 3 different ways of assessing students prior knowledge). I have chosen these 3 lessons as these lessons were the ones in which I was teaching the class a new topic for the first time. As I have been in my current school since September I don't have the luxury of having taught the students before (last year, the year before etc - I have been teaching them since September!) and so don't know what they may/may not have covered last year. Sure, I have held conversations with colleagues who did teach my classes last year as to what they did with them, but will my students have actually retained this information and still have a working knowledge of it? This, is what I will be essentially checking in each of the lessons I have highlighted. I must point out at this stage that I am very much still learning how best to assess my students prior knowledge and, indeed, how to plan a lesson following this initial assessment and being flexible enough to go in whichever route the class need to venture down! So, that being said, if anyone has any pearls of wisdom they can share I'd be more than grateful to hear from you.

Lesson A1 - Year 9 - Linear Equations
(Socrative) see http://mrcollinsmaths.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/socrative.html for my 1st post on using Socrative.

Before teaching this lesson I received an e-mail from my HoD with a Socrative quiz he had used in his class and having used one of his quizzes before (see blog post above) I thought this would be a great way of assessing what my top set year 9 class may already know from last year. The quiz only consisted of 10 questions, all ranging throughout the topic that I was just about to teach the class - Linear Equations. The only objectives for that topic that the quiz didn't cover explicitly were plotting inequalities and shaded regions, which the class would eventually go on to once I was confident they knew how to plot a linear equation, recognise the gradient and y-intercept from its' equation and be able to recognise parallel lines and lines that were parallel with one of the axes.

So, I introduced the quiz to the class and the minute I said they'd need to get their mobile phones out there was an immediate joy about the room! The students, all, in turn, completed the online 'live' quiz and I had the results coming up on the board so I could see how the students were doing and how many of the 10 questions they were getting correct; the competition between them was fantastic. The only problems with the Socrative quiz and assessing my students prior knowledge at this point was that on the 'live' screen you just see a mark out of 10 for each student and so as much as I could see generally how many questions they were getting right, I couldn't tell which ones exactly they had got correct/wrong. However, at the end of the quiz, once all students had submitted their answers you are able to send yourself a report of the students answers to peruse and use in your lessons. So, as not to embarrass any students I didn't delve into these too much in the lesson, and perhaps I should have done as I needed the time to go over the individual questions and assess where I needed to go next. However, this I could do later! I was almost helped by the fact that the time left of the lesson wasn't exactly that plentiful. Due to students having to share mobile devices/my computer/my iPhone the Socrative quiz ended up taking a good half hour to complete fully. So, for the remainder of the lesson I did two things...

The first was to go over each question in turn, covering any misconceptions the students may have had and also giving them instant feedback on the questions they had just answered. The benefit this had for them is that they could see which ones they had got wrong and why. I heard a lot of 'oh yeah...' noises coming from the class as I was explaining each question; I went through the quiz on the IWB just like they would have done on their mobile devices and then added notes to the board where needed for them to jot down.
The second thing I did, for the remainder of the lesson (about 10-15 minutes) is I got the students up at the board and in pairs, using my IWB buzzer resource I found online [see http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/IWB-Buzzer-6258257/], I asked them various questions on the quiz and new topic we were starting - I tried to cover here the misconceptions they had previously with some of the questions.

So, the lesson itself turned into a whole period of assessing prior knowledge and covering the misconceptions and gaps they may have had. This was more than I had wanted to spend, but in hindsight it actually allowed me to consider more what they had learnt before and it helped refresh their memories. Plus, I was then able to build on this in out next lesson.

For our next lesson I had analysed the results from the Socrative quiz and found some common areas of weakness - nearly all students were unaware of parallel lines and that the gradient of parallel lines being the same and therefore the equation only different by the y-intercept. Also, the students seemed to lack knowledge of equations of lines parallel to the axes, namely lines like x = 1 and y = -3 etc. The common misconception here was that they believed that horizontal lines had an equation x = c and vertical lines had an equation y = c. So, for our next lesson I chose to do some group work with the students moving around desks in a carousel format. There were 5 different tasks (5 tables of 6/7 students) all linked to the learning objectives in the students topic trackers and based on the questions that were commonly poor from the quiz. Task 2 was with me at the IWB going through equations of lines parallel to the axes as this was the main misconception from the previous lesson.

What I found was that I was much clearer on what I needed the students to do having spent a focused amount of time assessing their prior knowledge and having analysed the results properly. It then allowed me to cover the specific topics that needed work and has now set us up for our lesson on shaded regions and inequalities after half term. Students were fully motivated in both lessons and I feel this was a) down to them being able to use their mobiles to do the Socrative quiz and b) due to the group work lesson (I feel I'm pretty good at managing and facilitating group work lessons) but also down to the fact that students were at that point in their learning where they were (unaided) trying to remember their previous learning and then using my input to then put this into practice in the group tasks I had designed for them in the following lesson.

The one improvement I would possibly make when using Socrative quizzes again is to get the students, in a flipped classroom style, to complete the quiz at home prior to the lesson. This way the class have got some h/w to do to set them up for the next lesson/topic, I could analyse the results and then go from there. The only disadvantage of this is that students are obviously able to look up answers online and so the results may not reflect a completely honest version of my students knowledge?


Lesson A2 - Year 10 - Stem & Leaf Diagrams
(ABCD Fans - quiz) see http://mrcollinsmaths.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/abcd-fans-revisited.html for my post about my ABCD Fans (and the hassle I've gone through with them [well worth it though])

This lesson with Year 10 was a lesson in which I was asked to teach a class that I do not regularly teach and so the only information I was given is that they needed to be taught stem and leaf diagrams and that they may have done it in the past, but I'd need to make my own mind up as to how much they already knew and how much to start from scratch.
So, with this in mind I thought about how I could check what they already knew and then move on from here. I decided to use my ABCD Fans and a brief 10 question quiz. I also ended up planning a lesson or series of lessons for the aftermath of the quiz depending on where the students would be at. This included me planning a lesson essentially teaching stem and leaf diagrams for the 1st time, a lesson where the students had some prior knowledge but needed to go over a few things (working out the median, mode, range etc) and then a lesson where they were absolutely fine and needed moving on to back-to-back stem and leafs and comparing data sets. I found this useful in terms of my planning and for future use but also very time consuming. I think, naturally, with more experience, I'd be able to do a certain amount of this off the top of my head based on teaching the topic a few times but as I'm a NQT I needed to spend a bit more time planning resources and routes based on what the class would need.

Now, I mentioned the quiz had 10 questions. The first 4-5 questions were just on averages and working out the median, mode and range of sets of data. These questions were completed with relatively little difficulty and I only needed to just check a few things, provide 1 further example with one question and then write some key information on the board for the students to use at a later data. Question 5 or 6 was simply a picture of a stem and leaf diagram, multiple choice answers and the question...'what is this diagram?' They all knew what it was. Next question - how do I work out the median from this diagram - same picture of the stem and leaf diagram with a purposefully tricky set of multiple choice answers whereby 2 of them were just the leaf part of the most common numbers, one was the correct answer with the actual number and one was the amount of the number that appeared the most. All students were slow with answering this one and barely any of the ABCD Fans moved, let alone were held in the air above their heads indicating to me an answer of some sort. So, rather than go through the remaining questions I stopped them there and then got up my ppt on stem and leaf diagrams.
I reminded the students how the data gets put into the stem and leaf and then how you could work out the various averages. I then, as you can see in my previous post [http://mrcollinsmaths.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/whole-class-stem-leaf-diagrams.html] got them to create a stem and leaf diagram themselves.

The advantage my quick quiz had was that I was able to see quickly where the students knowledge stopped and then was able to build on it and work with what they did know. You could argue that I could have continued with the quiz as they may have known the last few questions but these were checked and covered in what followed in the lesson.

The lesson went fantastically well, and rather than before with the year 9 class where I went over the answers in greater length I was able to stop the activity as soon as I had a judgement on where I needed the lesson to go and then went there. I feel with the Socrative quiz there needed to be a greater analysis of results where as with this approach I could easily see when the students where getting the answers right and when they were 'stumped'.


Lesson A3 - Year 10 - Ratio & Proportion
(DfE Standards Unit - exam questions and sample answers [with mistakes])

The last example of having assessed my students prior knowledge and looking to build on it was with my regular year 10 class when covering ratio and proportion.

Now, this is a topic, that having taught KS3 classes a lot more than KS4 over the past few years, I have a good idea of what is covered prior to students entering year 10. However, I wouldn't want to assume that this knowledge had been assimilated and so used the DfE Standards Unit lesson on proportion with the intention of taking from it the bits that my students needed and then moving them on to looking at direct/inverse proportion and the constant of proportionality.
I chose the standards unit task as the lesson is based on students being initially given 4 exam style questions involving proportion, answering these with their partner and then being given some sample answers (with mistakes and correct answers included) and then marking this work just as if they were a teacher.
The advantage this had is that as the pairs were working on the 4 questions I was able to make my way around the room and ask the students questions as to how they were going about answering the questions. This, in itself, highlighted some prior knowledge and equally a good amount of missing knowledge. However, from when the students got the sample answers to correct, the missing knowledge was partially sorted as the students were able to see methods of working and were able to correct them or just tick them. I think for a lot of them it was a case of knowing how to get started with the questions and understanding what it was they were being asked to do. Once they saw the initial workings they were able to correct the mistakes the sample material had made (adding denominators of fractions for example).

After this initial paired work I asked the class questions as to how they went about completing the questions and then covered all of the mistakes in the answers before moving on. I used the flow diagrams part of the lesson to link proportion to multiplication and checking the students new the unitary method. We didn't quite have enough time to get on to looking at direct/inverse proportion in the lesson for the amount of time I felt we needed on this. So, without moving on too fast I got students, again in their pairs, to finish off the last part of the lesson which was to come up with their own proportional problems for their partner to solve using the flow charts we had discussed.


What I have learnt from focusing more heavily on students prior knowledge is that my students are challenged more so than what they may have been had I assumed some sort of prior knowledge and decided personally on where I thought the class would be. I have also learnt from this that I need to continue to do this at the start of each topic and come up with new ways of checking what my students already know. I think that in subsequent years I will naturally have a better idea of what my students will already know, especially if I am to keep certain classes over the next few years etc. However, the experience I have now gained from doing this #blogsync and reflecting on what it has meant for the motivation of my students and the impact on their learning, even if I don't teach the same classes I will have a much better idea of how to effectively assess their prior knowledge and adapt to it.

Thank you to those of you that have taken the time to read this - I know it's been a bit of a long one and thanks to those of you that may suggest other ways in which I can go about assessing students prior knowledge.

Remember...go and check out the other posts on http://share.edutronic.net/.