Hello Maths,

I hope you’ve all had a good first week back.

This week has been the start of the fractions unit with year 7.  The lessons are mainly discussion based, which is great for improving our students’ spoken reasoning and oracy skills.  There have been some interesting discussions in my class this week, particularly about why when p/q = p÷q, q cannot equal zero.  Their faces when they were trying to imagine dividing baguettes between zero people were a picture! I also realised that many of them (depending on their previous school) had simply memorised procedures for converting between improper fractions and mixed numbers.  This meant that there was often a lack of understanding about the connection between the numbers, and an audible ‘aaah!’ when they realised the connection. I could tell the shift when some students started answering questions as ‘Two wholes and two thirds’ instead of ‘Two and two thirds’ which showed they were imagining what it actually looked like when working it out.  This is less likely to occur over the coming years as students will have had more time studying the new KS2 curriculum.

The discussion about fractions is invaluable, however, you may find that several lessons back to back might seem to drag a bit. If this is the case with your class, please do supplement your lessons with written exercises or consolidation activities when required. If you are writing your own exercises and use some of the ‘intelligent practice’ and ‘variation’ we discussed at the INSET, please can you share your exercises, and I will add them to the schemes.

World Book Day is this week. I have added a section in the year 7 Scheme of Work for Spring 2 for you to use on 2nd March. The resources have been adapted or taken from Stacy3010 from TES and can be found here .  You may need two lessons depending on your class.

I will be adding a section to the year 8 Scheme of Work next week for Pi Day celebrations too. However, you might like to give your classes advance notice if you are running a ‘Recite Pi’ competition. I know that BBA will be running this as part of the House competition.  There is a really good app called ‘Learn Pi’ which is free to download.

Try not to get too addicted if you download it yourself.  I once lost a few days of a rainy holiday challenging my friend’s teenage son to a pi duel. I know how to enjoy myself!

BBA and ALC have your second mock exams for year 11 this week. I will update the marksheets on Go4Schools. However, although the new grades will be calculated, the ‘Current Grades’ won’t be updated until all of the results are in to avoid confusion for students who might be checking online. Joel and Louise will let you know your marking deadlines. Please familiarise yourselves with the mark schemes before you start your marking.

Have a great weekend.

Matilde