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)

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).

Deal or No Deal Revision - refined

A couple of years a go I (with the help of Miss Moore) created my 'Deal or no Deal' boxes that I have used in class when exam season hits.
I first used the boxes back when I was a Cover Supervisor and volunteered to run a revision session in the Easter Holidays as part of the school's intervention programme for the GCSEs. You can see this on my old 'GTP reflective journal' blog at http://mrcollinsreflectivejournal.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/revision-deal-or-no-deal-stylie.html

Now, I believe that I do revision lessons pretty well. I am able to find fun and engaging ways to do revision that my classes enjoy and learn from. One of these is my 'Deal or No Deal' revision session.

This year I decided to tweak the session from what I had done previously to make it even better than it had been. This was based on a conversation I had with my HoD about how it could be made better. We had run a joint revision lesson for our year 8 classes earlier in the year before their 'mid-term assessment' and we spoke about a few things that could be improved...

Before I had used SMARTboard and SMARTnotebook I was using a powerpoint file to have the 'Deal or No Deal' board on that I would update as the game was going on. This took time and stopped the session at points to do the all needed updating of the board. So, now that I had SMART to work with I created a board on SMARTnotebook that would allow me to easily swipe away the amounts. Not only this, I also put a question under each amount so that as it was swiped away a question would be revealed that the class would then all have a go at answering, rewards given to those with the correct answer. This made the game a bit more about revision than just opening boxes. Here's how the main 'board' looks like on screen...

 

Whilst the game is going on these questions aren't the only ones the students get to answer. In each player's box there is a question to answer once they (and their box) have been selected in the game. I also give each student a worksheet of 10-20 questions to be answering throughout and after the game has finished. This is how my most recent one looked...

 

 

These questions are then marked and gone through after the game has finished to check understanding and provide more of a particular question where necessary. The 'game' part of the lesson/session only takes up to 40 minutes to do. This leaves the rest of the session/lesson to go through the questions the students have to do throughout the game and those that are in their boxes. All the questions in the boxes are past exam questions too.

 

I feel the revision session using the above format not only engages my students, especially when they see the room set up in two aisles and with the red boxes on top, but it also gets them to answer more questions than they perhaps would if I had just given them a past paper and told them to get on with it. They discuss answers a lot more, work together to try and get the 250,000 prize box, which they are rewarded by accordingly throughout the continuous 'banker' offers - I always get a guest teacher to come and be the banker! I use my 'random box generator' to chose a box at the start of the lesson so all students have a fair chance of 'playing' the game. All other students are manning the boxes on their own or in pairs depending on numbers of students (I only have 20 boxes).

 

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)

GCSE Revision - 'Tip of the Iceberg'

Earlier in the year, late January, I observed a 'literacy exhibition lesson' that one of our school's English ASTs put on for teachers to attend if they were free and able to do so.

As literacy across the curriculum is a key push by our school this year there have a been a number of these lessons put on by our ASTs and I this is the 1st post of the lessons I have observed and will write about.
Another pull to observe this lesson is that the class that were being taught included a few of my Y11 class, some of which I had, at the time, only recently started to teach after our sets were changed due to recent examination results. So, I had the added bonus of seeing some of my students in another lesson, which I have found extremely useful in the past - how they act/react to a different teacher/subject etc.

The lesson itself was about the class revising for their English GCSE examinations and answering a GCSE question, focusing on structuring an answer and also on analytical skills.

The lesson started with an image of an iceberg of the board. The teacher asked what they could see on the board. This lead to a discussion on the 'tip of the iceberg' and how this was the 'explicit' part of a GCSE question - what it's literally telling/asking you to do. The rest of the iceberg, and majority, was the implicit part of the GCSE question, what is being implied by the question and what is it you need to do/show that they're not actually telling you in order to answer the question.

For example if you saw a question involving an image of a triangle and the question said 'Find x' you would explicitly be asked to work out the missing value of the length of the triangle marked x. What could be implied is that you need to use Pythagoras' Theorem in order to do this.

The lesson then continued to look at some images and the teacher asked the class what was implied by the images. One of the images was of a red rose. The suggestions the class came back with were: danger, love, death, anger, fragility, pride (the English rugby team's logo), beauty etc. Lots of areas here for discussion with each that were explored as the teacher questioned why they had chosen their given suggestion. What was key to this activity is the teacher used a lot of encouraging language to entice the students; 'there are no wrong answers', 'you're not wrong', your opinion can never be wrong' were just some of the phrases that were used.
The teacher then asked how they explain what is beneath the surface and then referred the class to a flipchart which had a load of analytical vocabulary. The class would later be looking out for this vocab in a written answer to the question they would then be asked to answer themselves.

After this, the teacher showed the class an image of a burger and used it to symbolise the stages in structuring an essay answer. The bun was the 'point' they were making, the burger/filling would then be the 'quote' the students would use to back up their point and then the other bun was their 'comment' explaining their point. This was when the exam question ('how does John Agard use imagery in Flag to present attitudes to conflict') was showed on the IWB and the teacher, having given a copy out to each student, asked them to highlight the 3 parts of the example answer and then highlight any analytical language that was used within the answer. This was key to setting the class up to then write their own answer to the question, or (quite nicely) another question of their choosing from the same poem they were studying. There was a brief 'it's quiet work now' before the class then got on with writing their own answers to the question/their chosen question. After the class were given time to do this they were welcomed to read out their answers and students were asked to listen out for their analytical vocabulary.

Whilst the class were working, and throughout the lesson, I was thinking of how I can get the lesson into one of my Mathematics lessons, something that being a Mathematics teacher doesn't necessarily come naturally! I've always thought that getting literacy into a Mathematics lesson is as difficult as getting numeracy into an English lesson!

However, I related everything the teacher did to the Mathematics GCSE paper. Sometimes students fall short as they do not understand what the question is asking them to do. This is often the case where you see questions that just give an equation and say 'Solve'. That is the only information the student is given - to solve the equation. But how? How do they solve the equation, what do they need to do...this is what is implied by the question by what sort of equation they are given. This is what I wanted to look at with my Y11 class and so I thought about 'the tip of an iceberg'...

I decided that I would simply, like in the above observed lesson, start my lesson by showing the class an image that they are likely to see in a GCSE examination paper -  right-angled triangle. From this I started to think of all the things the class could be asked to do and same up with this double sided piece of A3 paper...(the possibilities are seemingly endless, but did my students know this?)

It took me a while to sit down and think of all the possible questions/topics that could involve a right-angled triangle, I was surprised by how many possibilities/variations there could be...just from a right-angled triangle!

'Front and back'!

















Having planned all the different things I could cover with the class in the lesson I started to put together a notebook file using the topics I felt the class would need to revise. Here are the initial few slides I showed the class...

This was my 'starter' slide. The amount of things the class suggested in terms of what they may be asked to do (what was implied/suggested by the image) were fantastic. It was also a way of me asking certain questions to gauge what they may have already known about certain topics

I used the 'tip of the iceberg' image the teacher used in the lesson I observed to show some continuity across the school to those students we both teach. I used this opportunity to praise those students in the lesson for their answers in the literacy lesson.

This is one of the slides I used to see if the class knew what they would be asked to do (explicitly stated in the exam question, i.e. rotate the shape 90 degrees about the point (1, 2)) Then, ask them what that implied they'd need to do? i.e. use their knowledge of coordinates and rotations - how do they rotate a shape?  etc
I then, after their suggestions as to what they may be asked to do, and then how they would do it, what they might need to use etc I revealed all the different things they could be asked to do with the image/question presented

I then gave the class some questions involving working out the perimeters/areas of triangles using Integers, decimals, fractions - these questions would test whether they would be able to multiply/add decimals and fractions - something that would be implied by the question just by the values they are given.

Finally, for the 'plenary' of the lesson, I showed the class this slide and gave them each a piece of A3 paper to fill in a 'mind map' style revision sheet based on the image I showed them right at the start of the lesson. They then would take this home and finish it off for 'homework'/their own revision.

 

I have added this, and a similar 'circles' tip of the iceberg resource to my TES resources for anybody to download (get them both, in the same resource, here) if they feel this may be something that would suit their classes. Both slides include loads of different topics/images to see what the class would glean from them.

 

I found this to be an excellent way of finding out what students might already know/not know on a given topic that was suggested from the original image shown at the start of the lesson. Then in the lesson itself, using the carefully planned activities, I was able to see if they knew lots of other facts/information by asking them to work with fractions, decimals, percentages (for higher students - surds) etc.

 

Hopefully, it also enabled my students to interpret the examination questions better too, looking for all the information in the question to help them understand what it may be that they are being asked to do - what the question is implying.

 

Let me know if you use the resource, if you make any amendments to it or have done something similar. Thanks to 'JB' for his lesson mentioned above, it provided me with the inspiration to create the resources for my own lessons, and hopefully has helped me build in literacy to my Mathematics lessons?!

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)