Hi all

Hope everyone had a great half term. Couple of things from me this week:

Year 11 Resources 

You will see I have started to upload revision lessons and other resources to this section. Last year I came across a lovely question linking ratio and linear graphs that I hadn’t seen or considered before, it was something like this:

x : y  = 2 : 1

(a)  Draw the graph of y as a function of x.

(b)  Write down the equation of your graph.

This could be asked of our students at either tier and I was concerned that many of my students may be thrown by connecting these two particular concepts.Please have a look at the lesson I created and feel free to use!

I recently discovered a fantastic set of reasoning and problem solving questions on AllAboutMaths, they were first published October 2016 but I have only just come across there is so much on this site. Have a look!

Spring 2

You will have seen a few more changes to our scheme of learning for this half term. Whilst Year 10 continues to be developed from scratch there is some new content in Year 7 and Year 9 this half term.

I will leave the old Year 7 Spring 1 lessons where they are for now but the idea is that these lessons are integrated into other half terms and lessons. The KS2 curriculum covers a lot of these concepts at depth anyway.

Louise

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

Hello all

Year 7 and 9 Common Assessment

You can find the Year 7 and Year 9 Spring Common Assessments in the assessment section now. The deadline for G4S data entry is 13/02/19. Thank you in advance for all your hard working marking these and meeting this deadline.

Year 11 Mock 2

I recently shared the following graph with the Principals to share how our progress measure in our Maths departments changed as last years’ cohort went from the end of Year 10 to Mock 1 to Mock 2 to Actual.

It was interesting to notice that last year the progress was most rapid in the majority of our schools between Mock 1 and Mock 2. It will be interesting to see if a similar pattern emerges this year. The second mocks for Year 11 are starting in just over 2 weeks, I have been sharing this: GCSE Countdown! with my Year 11 classes in an attempt to motivate them further!

Kind Regards

Louise

 

 

 

Happy New Year!

Hope you have all had a lovely time with your family and friends over Christmas, I know I have – today has come as quite a shock! I have already written 2018 twice…

Three things from me this week:

Low Stakes Testing

As our curriculum is linear the importance of regularly retrieving prior learning has never been more important. I have a Year 10 class at NES and have tested them weekly for 20 minutes since the start of the year. Initially I did this as I wanted to get to know what they couldn’t do that they should have been able to do at this point! Now I know them fairly well I am continuing to test them weekly to ensure that they don’t forget how to solve simultaneous equations, use the Sine rule to calculate a missing angle and everything else they have learnt this academic year. The test I create is deliberately made with AO1 style questions and only changes subtly each week dependent on how the class do to encourage progress and a high rate of success for all. Individual progress is celebrated, rewards are given to students that see their moving average improve over time. A one-size fits all test isn’t appropriate as I believe that for low stakes testing to be most effective the tests should adapt to fit the needs of the class but I will share the tests I create for my class here. Please feel free to use/amend as necessary.

Year 10 Archway8 Spr1 Quiz1

Tutoring Opportunity

Aspire are looking for Maths tutors to help willing and eager Year 11 students after school for £25 per hour. Please contact Lee Miveld if you are interested.

Recruitment Event

We are hosting a recruitment event in at NES on Thursday 17th January 2019 at 5:30pm to 7:30pm. As ever we are interested in recruiting more high quality, dedicated Maths teachers to our teams across the trust, as well as senior leaders in a number of academies. If you know anyone that may be interested in joining us then please do invite them to come along!

Kind Regards

Louise

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello!

Year 10 Common Assessment

Thank you for all of your work getting these assessments completed and marked in time for the deadline today. I have calculated the Year 10 CAF grade boundaries to be as follows:

• Grade 9 : 46 (out of 50)
• Grade 8 : 40
• Grade 7 : 34
• Grade 6 : 29
• Grade 5 : 24
• Grade 4 : 16
• Grade 3 : 12
• Grade 2 : 09
• Grade 1: 03

You will see the grade boundaries on G4S change to reflect these over the next few days.

Foundation or Higher ?

As our scheme of learning continues to be developed into Year 10 there have been a few questions about whether certain concepts should be taught to certain groups of students that we anticipate will do Foundation tier at the end of Year 11. Essentially my answer is yes, absolutely!

For the vast majority of students tier decisions will not (and should not) be made at this stage in Year 10 and we should be enabling all students to access as much of the Maths curriculum as possible until an informed decision has been made. In addition to this I cannot think of any Mathematical concept in the current GCSE Maths curriculum that wouldn’t be beneficial in some way for any student to be learning about! For example, using the Cosine Rule is not assessed on the Foundation tier but substituting into formulae definitely is. Drawing Trigonometric Graphs is not a foundation topic but using a calculator and plotting coordinates is. Finding the equation of a tangent is not on the Foundation tier but knowing what a tangent is and being able to calculate the equation of a straight line is. I could go on! The challenge we face is ensuring that our lessons are planned well enough to enable all students to access them. Some lessons will require a number of preparatory lessons beforehand for certain classes. If you would like any help with this please get in touch or speak with your Head of Maths and do continue to share with me and each other scaffolding activities you have used.

ChristMaths

It has been lovely to see lots of different ChristMaths competitions at BWA this last week. Here are a few of the entries they had for a ChristMaths Mathscot:

On that note, I shall wish you all a Merry Christmas! Hope you all have a fantastic break and I look forward to seeing you all next year.

Louise

Happy December and Happy Friday!

Number Rolling on the BBC and ITV

Initially I wasn’t sure about number rolling; which is essentially whole class chanting of multiples to actions in a bid to help the recall of times tables. However as soon as I saw a Year 7 girl quietly and quickly number rolling her multiples of 7 to work out 8 x 7 I was sold. Obviously I would prefer her to instantly know the answer to 8 x 7 but as we are well aware, despite the tireless work of our primary colleagues, a number of our students don’t have the high level of recall we would like when they join us at secondary. It was lovely to see number rolling feature in the news reports filmed at BWA this week on both the BBC and ITV! If you didn’t manage to catch it, here is a clip from the ITV news report featuring our wonderful Michelle Booth (aka Number Rolling guru):

Year 11 Mock 1

The data is now all in, thank you for all of your efforts meeting the deadline on Wednesday. Having looked at historical data it appears that the greatest amount of progress made by our Year 11 students is made between now and Mock 2. I had assumed the most rapid progress would be between Mock 2 and actual but the data did not support by hypothesis! The medium terms plans for Year 11 I have seen so far have been fantastic, at NES in particular the medium term plans are very comprehensive with spaced retrieval topics also planned from the mock 1 QLA. Keep an eye on the Y11 section where I will share medium terms plan for comparable classes across the trust and resources to support. 

ChristMaths

Lastly, thank you to Adam for sending me this lovely article about Mathematical Christmas Cards, if you don’t fancy letting your classes loose with needles and cotton here is a paper based version of this activity:

Louise 

Hello everyone 

Year 10 Common Assessment 

Thank you all for your feedback on the provisional Year 10 Common Assessment. The Year 10 Common Assessment is ready and stored in our new assessment section on here. For security there is a new password to gain access to this page which I will let you know via email. 

The Year 10 common assessment is interleaved, as all the other common assessments will be. The proportions of work assessed is as follows:

20% from Year 9

40% from Year 10 Autumn 1

40% from Year 10 Autumn 2 

Please do not be tempted to teach to the test, we want and need the CAF data to reflect where our students are so we can help them make further progress. The deadline for Year 10 CAF data is Wednesday 19th December. 

Fibonacci Day 

Last week it was fantastic to see Bluecoat Wollaton celebrate Fibonacci Day.

They made Fibonacci Spiral’s in form time…

 And some “Fibs” later on in the day…

Time to start planning for Pi Day! 

Thank you to teachers of Year 8, the first CAF deadline was met by all. Hurray! Going forward we need to ensure that data is inputted in plenty of time to give us ample opportunity to chase students that were absent when the assessment was sat.

At our subject leaders meeting this week we discussed our responses to the Year 8 assessment. All resources are limited (including time!!) so we thought about realistic and impactful ways we as classroom teachers can ensure that the information we have gained from the assessment is used in a meaningful way to help all students make more progress.

I shared this response as an example of good practise:

1. Notes should be taken during marking to establish common misconceptions and apparent lack of knowledge by the majority of the class (there is no formal QLA spreadsheet) and identified concepts should be planned into future spaced retrieval quizzes.
2. The main errors should be explicitly and directly explained to the class but ideally not for too long (common estimates of the attention span of healthy teenagers range from 10 to 20 minutes).
3. Students placed in mixed attainment groups of 4 with an A3 copy of the assessment or key questions from the assessment to complete the questions collaboratively (and hopefully more accurately!). Solutions then swapped between groups and mark schemes provided for groups to mark each others work.
4. At least two individualised homework opportunities set with concepts identified from the students progress grids (HegartyMaths homework would be perfect for this!)

The next CAF deadline is for Year 10: Wednesday 19th December.

Hope you all noticed that yesterday was a very special day… a palindromic, ambigrammatic, strobogrammatic, vertically and horizontally symmetric, ʇuoɹɟ oʇ ʞɔɐq puɐ spɹɐʍʞɔɐq uʍop ǝpᴉsd∩ semiprime — day (81118) – when will the next one be??

Hope you all have a good weekend

Louise

 

 

 

Hi all

Thank you again for all of your enthusiasm and ideas this afternoon. Please do let me know how your Year 10 lessons go next half term and remember to share any improvements you make with us all.

Here is the PPT I used this afternoon, the lessons I shared are in Year 10 Autumn 2.

The websites I referred to are linked below:

Don Steward

MrCarterMaths

NCETM

Hope you have a fabulous half term!

Louise

Hello Maths,

Year 8 Common Assessment 1

The first official common assessment is ready. All Year 8 students across the trust should be doing this assessment next week in lessons. The assessment requires 50 minutes; if you have students that are officially allowed extra time then please allow for this and complete the assessment before a break to enable all students to complete it is one sitting. Scores need to be entered on to Go4Schools by Wed 7th November.

What it is not!

As we know the use of non-examples can encourage students to deepen their understanding of a particular concept. I enjoy thinking of non-examples and planning them into my lessons and now there is a new website created by Jonathan Hall  (author of Mathsbot) that is creating and sharing them too. Definitely a website to watch as more content is being added weekly.

Festival of Learning 2018

Our first whole MAT Maths CPL session this academic year is approaching. See attached. We will be looking at teaching for mastery in Year 10 and be discussing how we implement some of the strategies shared by the key note speakers. I look forward to seeing everyone together then!

Louise