Hi Maths

I don’t think there has ever been a longer Autumn term – 1st September until 22nd December – and you’re all still here!

If you didn’t catch the new Primary bulletin earlier in the week, please do have a look on the Primary tab. Our colleagues had the official opening of their building this week, which is all very exciting!

For this last bulletin of the year, I would like to thank everyone of you for your hard work this term. There have been a lot of changes, and not too many complaints (well, not to my face, anyway!) and it has been great to see years 7 and 8 engaging in the lessons so well, even though some of the tasks are pretty challenging.

If you have finished the schemes for this half term and have some lessons to spare, there are some Christmas lessons here.  The page has been updated since I sent you the link earlier in the week. I had forgotten Speedy Santa, which is a Fermi style problem solving lesson. I’ve also added this link to Desmos for a drawing a Christmas tree activity, which is really good. (Click on the picture to go the the Desmos page)

Adam from Wollaton has also sent a folder full of goodies to share, which is now linked on the page.

The first four lessons for next term’s year 8 are already up, and the first four for year 7 will definitely be uploaded this weekend, so that you don’t have to spend your holiday doing too much planning.

Have a wonderful holiday everyone – have a good rest and try not to think about work.

I’ll see you all nice and refreshed and ready to go in January.

Merry Christmas!

Matilde

Hello Maths,

Apologies for a very late Friday bulletin. I started wrapping Christmas presents, and it took a lot longer than I had expected. Next year I’m only buying cuboid shaped presents (I’m sure I say that every year).

Anyway, not much to write about this week – just a little bit about the upcoming test year 9/10 test (non-calculator btw).

While writing this test I was reminded about this question from the 2012 KS2 tests. This is an ‘old style’ question and was the worst answered question that year.

This question was discussed at length at a conference for Primary Headteachers when the new Primary curriculum was launched the following year. They discussed how they thought the question was too difficult for their children.  The Director of Primary for the NCETM then distributed strips of paper and did this:

She then asked the Headteachers to answer the question.  They very quickly came up with strips similar to this:

which gave the answer 24 without any calculation.

This structure can also be used to answer question 12 on the latest year 9/10 non-calculator test paper.

If you use your strip of paper, this 4 mark question is ridiculously easy.

I wonder how many of our students will use a diagram to answer the question?

I am aware that students can access this page, so I may have inadvertently given away a question on the test. However, if they are so keen to do well that they are trawling their teachers’ maths bulletins, then I think they deserve a few free marks!

I will be starting to put together the Spring 1 units of work for years 7 & 8 this week.  Year 7 will be on Angles, and Year 8 will be on 2D Geometry. For year 8, the first few lessons will be the area lessons from year 7, as they won’t have seen those lessons before.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend – not long to go now!

Matilde

Hello Maths,

December is here, which means it’s the NRich Advent calendar time. I always enjoy using these to start my lessons in December. The problem from the 1st fits in very nicely with the area work from year 7 at the moment.  If you do use any of the problems in class, or if any of your students try the problems at home, please encourage your students to share what they have tried and discovered. At the bottom of each problem page there is a comment box where they can submit their work, or they can email their solutions to NRich.  Their attempts may be featured in their showcase. There is also a Primary Advent calendar here.

If your students (or you!) enjoy the problems, there are many more for them to explore on the Wild Maths website. I clicked on the link How to Solve Equations, which is a talk by Dr Vicky Neale on how mathematicians approach solving equations. The video is quite long, but at 8 minutes, there’s a really interesting bit on how she would find the number of integer solutions to this problem.

If you’ve got a few spare minutes maybe have a go yourself before watching the video.

I know that several of you have said that it’s taking quite a bit of time to work through the year 7 scheme this half term.  If you need to carry over into next half term, then please do so – as long as we have the test done by the 20th Jan please.

There is no year 8 test this half term. Year 9 at Aspley and Wollaton and Year 10 at BBA have a test this coming week. It will be on the site by the end of the weekend.  The Year 10 test for Aspley and Wollaton is due after the first week back in January.

That’s it for today – short and sweet.

See you all next week,

Matilde

Hello Maths

Before the multiplication lessons for Year 7, I was able to go over some of the ideas with the AL and WC teachers in a Thursday afternoon session. I was asked at the time if we would have the same for the division lessons.  Unfortunately we haven’t had that opportunity, and so in this bulletin I am going to share some of the ideas behind the lessons that will be coming soon.

I would like to share some videos from the NCETM that I have used to inform my planning for the Division lessons in year 7.  They show the use of place value counters, which we used in our earlier lessons on addition and subtraction.

These videos (the red links) are from Year 4 lessons.  I think that they show the progression in ideas really well. The Year 7 lessons don’t go as far back as this, but the ideas will certainly be useful when students are receiving intervention, or if students are really struggling with the algorithm for division.

The teacher introduces division vocabulary.

Consider the high expectations in terms of using the correct vocabulary.

Using place value counters and recording division

Notice how the children work in pairs where one manipulates and the other records. They then swap roles.  This has proved to be an effective strategy to develop both reasoning and fluency in the use of the formal written method.

Division with remainders

Notice how the pupils’ estimating skills improve as they become familiar with the use of the place value counters for division.

The pupils recognise a problem in the tens column and suggest that they will need to “regroup”. What do you think they mean by this, and what does this indicate about their understanding of place value?

Division with exchange

Notice how a thorough understanding of the physical process of re-grouping and exchange enables the children to use the language of re-grouping when talking about the algorithm.

Finally, we move onto a lesson from KS3 on solving problems involving division.

Problems involving division

In this lesson, the girls work on a variety of problems involving division and multiplication. I got a bit irritated with the girl drawing on her whiteboard rubber at 5:38, but I think it shows some of the conversations that some of our students might have.

The division lessons for year 7 will be on the site this weekend.

In other news

You will have noticed that there is a new ‘Primary’ tab at the top of the page.  This page will share some of the work being done in Maths at Bluecoat Primary. It currently has  a few links for you to look at so you can learn about Maths No Problem, which is the excellent scheme they use for their Maths lessons.  Please do take the time to have a look.

Later on this term, Krissie Dickens, the Maths Lead, will use that page to showcase some of the work they are doing in Maths. I think you will find it really exciting  to see the work the children are involved with.

Have a great weekend everyone,

Matilde

Dear Maths

I’d like to start with a huge thank you to everyone for inputting all the data over the last two weeks.  In particular, the turnaround for the GCSE mock was fantastic. This means that Joel, Louise, Nick and myself are able to spend the afternoon analysing data and putting our intervention plans into place to maximise the amount of time between this mock and the next. The next mock is in the week before February half term.

As you will be aware, there are no grade boundaries available at the moment, so everyone around the country is struggling to make predictions. To help us make better predictions for the boundaries, I have been working with several schools from around the East Midlands to compare results. The boundaries we have agreed upon are these:

However, it must be remembered that these are at best an educated ‘guess’ and so students (and parents) should know they are not 100% reliable.

The Cambridgeshire Maths Hub have also been collating local results from all their schools who do AQA to set boundaries.  Their results are as follows:

As you can see they are very similar (which is a relief!). The only issue seems to be what will constitute a 5 on the Foundation paper. This obviously has implications for us when deciding on tiers of entry.  It may have been skewed due to schools being cautious and entering possible 5’s in Foundation rather than for Higher. This is an area I will be keeping a close eye on over the coming weeks and months.

KS3

I know that the year 7 and 8 lessons are taking quite a long time to get through, which is fine. I’ll be adding to the lessons this weekend so you have a while to look over the content beforehand so that you are well prepared for the lessons, and are able to make any changes as required. Please feel free to email me if you want me to go over any of the lessons with you – I can always arrange time to come and work with you in person too.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Matilde

Hi Maths

The Friday bulletin on a Friday! What a treat.

It has been a crazy week with the year 11 mock exams. Over here at BBA we have been delighted with how they have gone. The perseverance of some of our students on a very difficult paper (Higher paper 2) was amazing.

I sat down to write a model answer for this question yesterday as there was no-one in my class who scored more than 3 marks on it. It was on both the Foundation and Higher papers.

When marking the question it was apparent that it was the organisation of the work that caused most students problems, not the fact that they couldn’t do it. The students in my class kept making mistakes and then scribbling out their working, which meant they ran out of room.

When I wrote out my model answer, my first attempt didn’t fit in the space either! I had to redraft my working so that it could fit in the space but still include all my working in a way that clearly explained what I was doing.

Although I spend a lot of time in lessons on exam technique and how to answer non-routine questions, I know that I haven’t done much work with my year 11 classes in the past on drafting and redrafting work in exam conditions.  This is something I want to investigate further and will be working on over the next few weeks.

My favourite question on paper 2 was this one:

It requires knowledge of Venn diagrams, conditional probability and forming and solving quadratics. Lovely! I think our students will enjoy looking at how to answer these types of questions. The challenge for us is how do we include opportunities for such questions in our everyday teaching?

What was your favourite question? The geeks among you can answer in the comments section below!

On the subject of the mock exams, the East Midlands West Maths Hub are holding a Maths GCSE revision Teach Meet on 6th December from 4-6pm at George Spencer Academy. A flyer is attached here.  It is open to anyone who would like to attend.

The local Maths Hub events are always really good opportunities to keep up to date with the very latest news in maths education, as well as a great opportunity to form supportive networks with other maths teachers. We have two local hubs, East Midlands West and East Midlands East who both offer excellent opportunities.

East Midlands West  Bulletin November 2016

East Midlands East Newsletter November 2016

Just a final reminder that today is the deadline for data input for years 7-10 and that midday next Friday is the deadline for all year 11 marks to be in Go 4 Schools. Thank you to everyone who has input their data so far.

Matilde

Hello Maths

I hope you all had a great holiday and a good first week back.

A few deadlines are coming up over the next couple of weeks.  Please can you make sure that all data is in Go 4 Schools by the dates below. Thank you to those of you who have put theirs in so far. I hope you found the marking reasonable. Thank you to those who pointed out errors in my mark schemes. I think they have all been changed now ready for next year. Thank you also to Paul Dean at Aspley who has kindly offered to proof read future mark schemes.

Deadlines

Year 7 Prior knowledge audit – Friday 11th November

Years 7 – 10 test results – Friday 11th November

Year 11 mock results and QLA – Friday 18th November

Mock Exams

This is a very important exam for us in trying to determine predicted grades for the new GCSE, and to identify areas of weakness.

Please read the mark schemes carefully before you start your marking, familiarising yourselves with the codes in the glossary. Please don’t hesitate to ask if you are unsure. Joel, Louise and Nick will distribute the mark schemes for you next week, but they are available at All About Maths if you want to read ahead (you will need to register for a password if you don’t already have one).

There will be a very short QLA for you to fill in on Go 4 Schools.  For this first mock we will only be targeting 8 key questions from Higher and 8 key questions from Foundation. These will be taken from papers 1 and 2 only.  These will be the questions that we think all students should be able to answer, and the subsequent intervention will focus in depth on these topics over the next six weeks.

CPL

It was nice to see everyone from Aspley and Wollaton sites at the CPL on Thursday. Thank you to Louise for hosting us all.

The Powerpoint and documents are below.

Powerpoint
Video: Moving from Grid to a Column Method
Ofsted document: Good Practice in Primary Schools

I have also added the blank lattice templates to Year 7 lesson 2 as requested.

Geek fact of the week

Do you know what raising a number to a power of 4 is called?

Apparently 2⁴ can be read as “two  zenzizenic”, So 16 is the zenzizenic of 2.

This was coined by Robert Recorde (of the equals sign fame) as zenzizenzike in his 1557 mathematics book The Whetstone of Witte.

Unfortuantely the word is now obsolete, which is a shame, because I was looking forward to talking about the eighth power of a number as the zenzizenzizenzic, and the sixteenth power which is… you guessed it: zenzizenzizenzizenic.

Anyway, thought I’d share in case any of your year 8’s ask what the word is while they learn about indices this week. Thank you to Nick Wilson for introducing us to this great word!

Hello Maths,

The Friday bulletin seems to be becoming a Saturday Bulletin as the term moves on!

This week will be assessment week for lots of your classes.  Time to see if our little lovelies have learnt what we had intended them to.

Year 7 and 8 (and 9 at BBA)

Christa at BBA has decided to print out the record sheet on A5 separately to the test which is on A4. This would allow the students to stick it into their books without the hassle of rippring out the sheet, folding it over etc. This is such a common sense suggestion and one I wish I’d thought of. I will create them as separate documents for future assessments.

This weekend I will be making a Powerpoint that has each question on a slide with solutions so you can go over bits that are needed with your classes.  As it’s the first time that they will have filled in the record sheet, I will put instructions on the Powerpoint too.

A reminder about the marking: please NO numbers to be given out to students at all. I’ve copied the section about the marking of these tests from the document I sent out to everyone at the start of term here. Please do have a read.

Year 10 (and 9 at Aspley and Wollaton)

The point of the assessments is to check progress on what we have taught. Hopefully most misconceptions will have been picked up and addressed through formative assessment and AfL during lessons, with the only mistakes made being ‘slips’ rather than a lack of understanding.  However, we all know that however hard we try, there are some who slip beneath the radar in lessons. So, if there are any blank boxes in questions in the first column of any of the assessments for years 7 – 10, there will need to be some work to address these gaps.

The intervention we do has to be manageable and realistic. However, we can’t ignore any obvious gaps in our students’ knowledge.  The first wave of intervention should be by the class teacher. This can be during lessons – maybe through starters, re-teaching, guided practice on topics, etc. We have a generous allocation of maths lessons, so this doesn’t need to be after school or at lunchtime unless you personally choose to do that.

Out of class intervention is a finite resource, so we have to prioritise who will receive it. This year we have decided to use this intervention time for year 7 students who have any blanks in the first column in the hope that by the time they reach year 11, they won’t be caught up in the seemingly never-ending intervention cycle.  The year 7 intervention has been organised on each campus to take place away from lessons to supplement the work already being done in class.

We are in the fortunate position at Bluecoat to have Maths Coaches, a luxury that many schools don’t have.  We use our coaches for students who are falling way below what they are expected to achieve. They work on focused topics identified by assessments.  We are using our coaches solely for year 11. There are also further year 11 sessions being run at all campuses for year 11’s who aren’t being seen by coaches, but who need help.  These are being run in form time and after school

Next half term

The lessons should start going up early next week for years 7 and 8. As you can imagine, they do take a very long time to put together, so please be patient if the all of the lessons do not appear by the start of the half term. My hope is that the lessons will usually be at least three ahead of where you should be.

Year 7 will be starting ‘Numeracy Ninjas’ for the start of each of their lessons next half term. Details can be seen here.  Nick has been trialling it with his year 7 at BBA this half term as a settler for the first half term of every lesson.

Just a reminder that the objectives for year 9 (ALC/WPC) and year 10 are all on this site. All students should cover all of the objectives as far as possible as decisions about tier of entry won’t be made until we have more information about boundaries from the year 11 exams next summer.

Year 9 at Aspley/Wollaton and Year 10 at BBA will be on Handling Data. The objectives are on this page.

Year 10 at Aspley Wollaton will be on Graphs 1. The objectives are on this page

Have a great last week of half term. Only four teaching days to go…

Matilde

Hello Maths

I hope you’ve all had a great week!

I’ve really enjoyed teaching the negative number lessons to year 7 this week.  We’ve spent far longer than I intended on the lessons, but it really feels like the students are really understanding what is going on. Negative numbers was one of the topics that was rushed through in previous years, due to time constraints, which often resulted in an annoyingly poor use of negative numbers higher up the school, particularly when multiplying out double brackets in the simplifying stage, and in substitution questions.

My final lessons were taken from the classic Standards Units (N9 Evaluating Directed Number Statements), adapted to include only addition and subtraction for our scheme. We will come back to the other statements next half term.

The students have to separate cards into ‘always, sometimes, never’ categories.  We actually spent three lessons on this in the end because the students wanted to answer all of the cards.  Some used sandcastle diagrams, some used charges and some used thermometers to explain their reasoning. They challenged each other with well thought out arguments. I was so pleased with them all!

It turns out that there are no ‘never’ statements in the cards we use so a good challenge at the end is for the students to make their own ‘never’ statements, which they thought about really well.

In other news…

The new year 8 progress checker and the year 9 and 10 assessments will be uploaded this weekend. They all have the usual password.

The year 8 assessment takes the same form as year 7: simpler fluency questions followed by questions that require reasoning and non-routine questions.  Once again, no numerical grades should be given to the students. This front cover grid should be used to identify areas of weakness.  Any blanks in the first column would require some action on the part of the teacher, and more formal intervention should it remain a problem. This paper is a non-calculator paper.

The GCSE assessments have a similar format for questions, starting easier and building up to non-routine questions. As tiers of entry have not yet been decided for any group and all students have the same objectives, all students will sit the same test. This means that there may be a few questions at the end that some students may not be able to access. The grades for each assessment range from 9-1, which can be shared with students. The percentage from the test should be put into Go4Schools which will convert the percentage to a grade.

There is a record table on the front cover, similar to the year 7 and 8 progress checkers. For any blank boxes, students will be directed to a video from either www.corbettmaths.com or lesson powerpoints so that students can work on areas they are struggling with. Hopefully this will encourage students to take responsibility for their own learning first, before any intervention takes place.

Have a good weekend everyone, and see you all next week.