Hi Maths

Welcome to the Friday bulletin on Sunday!

I’d like to start by apologising for the lack of assessment writing this week. Unfortunately due to a horrific case of the lurgy, I haven’t been able to complete them. Rather than try and rush them, I am going to miss them out. This means there will be no tests for year 9 or 10 at ALC or WPC and no tests for year 10 at BBA after the current topics.  If you have promised your classes a test, please feel free to use one of the text book texts from Kerboodle (Don’t record on Go 4 Schools as it won’t fit the grading system). However, it is fine to just miss it out completely.  The testing will be back on board for the next set. Sorry for any inconvenience!

Thank you to the teachers at WPC and ALC for the mock marking this last week. All data is in and Joel and Louise have been working hard to decide on appropriate interventions for those of our students who need a little extra help with their studies. They will let you know if any of your classes are affected.

I’ve been excited about writing this week’s bulletin after a fabulous visit to Mellers Primary school in Radford as part of our INSET at Beechdale this week.  The school use the Maths No Problem textbooks which Bluecoat Primary also use. Read about the books here.

Here are a few examples of randomly selected Year 5 Maths exercise books, but I could have photographed every single book, they were all so good.

Question 4 has the fractions in order with a really clear explanation why underneath. I was wondering how well some students in lower sets in year 9 and 10 would answer that question?

I’m annoyed I didn’t take a photo of the chicken solution.

It was great to be able to directly compare the work we’ve been doing in year 7 with the work from this mixed attainment year 5 class.  I  love the clear working out in the books.  The children clearly take the time to write down what they are doing, which is something I think some of our students need to work on.

The class books were kept in magazine files on the sides for anybody to see , and weren’t specially chosen for visitors. The books from the other subjects were equally impressive. I would love to be able to have any of our year 7 books from any of our classes available for visitors to see, knowing that the quality would be this good, but I don’t think we are quite there yet. Maybe next year!

As you can see, the future is bright for us at Secondary school of this is the quality of work that is coming in from year 5. Our schemes of work in year 7 will be altered year on year to accommodate this.

See you all next week,

Matilde