Hello all
Year 11 Mock 2
Hopefully the mocks have gone/are going well. I have uploaded the papers, mark schemes and student analysers to the assessment area here: Year 11 Mock 2.
Please ensure that your students have access to the student analysers, they are a fantastic resource for students to self-correct their work and see exemplar responses to each question as well as familiarise themselves with how marks are awarded (and not awarded!)
Low Stakes Testing
The low stakes testing I have implemented with my Year 10 class at NES continues to go well. They started this half term with a median of 45% and have ended with a median of 70%, we are slowly but surely filling in some of the gaps they have and improving their confidence. I will be working with Head of Maths on Thursday to start to develop the use of low stakes testing more consistently across all year groups so watch this space.
Ratio
Year 11 students across our trust are still finding working with ratio difficult. A question from Mock 2 was answered poorly by many students:
Don Steward recently wrote about this exact type of question recently. “Excluding the Middle” This thinking is covered by our students in Autumn 1 of Year 8 but not quite so explicitly as Don describes in his blog. I am developing additional ratio lessons for Year 11 and will post them once they are finished.
At a NCETM PD Lead course I attended last week a colleague discussed how in Shanghai the teaching observed there focussed on “the product of the inners equates to the product of the outers” – initially I had no idea what this meant. Using equivalent ratios it can be easily understood:
2 : 3 = 8 : 12
Product of “inners” = 3 x 8
Product of “outers” = 2 x 12
In general if a : b = c : d then bc = ad
I have not seen this approach before, I developed a lesson last year Writing a ratio as a linear equation that taught students how to solve equations involving ratio but I like this approach too and will be definitely adding this thinking to this lesson.
Happy Half Term (nearly!)
Louise