Hello Maths,

I’d like to start today’s bulletin by saying goodbye to Katie and wishing her a fantastic maternity leave.  Katie has been working hard over the past few weeks creating homeworks to accompany the year 7 and 8 schemes of work. Time to put your feet up now – see you soon!

It was great seeing everyone at Aspley for CPL on Thursday (Don’t worry BBA Maths, we will repeat the session at this week’s faculty meeting).  Thank you all for joining in with such good spirit. We’re very lucky to work at a place where people are happy to work together and discuss their subject with such enthusiasm.

Several of you have asked for the resources from the session, so the Powerpoint is attached here.

If any of you do develop any resources using the unit circle or the ratio tables, please do share them.  Some of you might like to develop something to go towards one of your appraisal targets, if it fits in with your development plans.

Upcoming events

The first set of mock exams for year 11 have been confirmed for the week starting 7th November at all campuses. The timing are slightly different at each though, so your DoL will let you know the details for your own school. We will be collating all results before setting boundaries, so will be setting a deadline for results to be in.  I’ll let you know the deadlines closer to the time.

That’s all this week as we had the CPL so most things were covered there.

Have a great weekend. See you all next week.

Matilde

 

 

Hello Maths,

The end of week 3! It’s seemed a very long one this week, possibly because of the recent open evenings. I hope you aren’t all too tired and are looking forward to a relaxing weekend.

I’ve managed to pop into a few more classrooms again this week.  Thank you for making me feel so welcome. I’ve loved seeing the KS3 lessons. The level of discussion and questioning that I have seen has been fantastic.  One class I saw at Wollaton who were working on the Cryparithms lesson in year 7 were so excited that they were begging to take the work home to finish!  I know some classes are finding the discussion based lessons difficult to keep concentration in.  Remember it is fine to supplement the lessons with consolidation/book work exercises if they need a break from all of the deep thinking!

 

CPL

For ALC and WPC CPL is joint faculty time from 2.30 – 4.00. I’ll let you know which campus on Monday. It is on the use of ratio tables and how they can be used in the GCSE as a tool for all students.

For BBA it is in the hall for Oracy Strategies.  This fits in very well with the work we are doing in KS3, so hopefully the maths department will have a lot to offer the session.

Deadlines

Hopefully the finalised year 7 intervention lists should be ready this week. Please make sure you have put your updated info onto Go 4 Schools.

 

KS3

Most people in year 7 are up to, or coming up to ‘Sandcastles’.

You may have wondered why on earth we are doing sandcastles followed by charges etc when lots of students can already ‘do’ negative numbers.

Negative numbers is one area that is full of misconceptions all the way up to GCSE.  Children are usually taught a several rules that many get confused about (how many times when simplifying -7x -6x do students say ‘13x, because two minuses make a plus’.  The idea here is to build up an understanding of negative numbers before diving straight into rules.

Please read this article from the ATM – MT217 that Lewis at Beechdale reminded me of this week.

The Sandcastles lesson isn’t a new one: the MrBartonMaths TES resource referenced in the article was made in 2007. We developed it in our department following a great CPL session by Richard Dunne. He talked about engaging learners through the systematic use of concrete objects, actions and language to make the abstract, symbolic language of mathematics accessible and enjoyable.  The current lesson uses an updated version of that resource.

Also, please read this  quick summary of Bruner’s Stages of Representation.  The lesson aims to follow the Enactive/ Iconic/Symbolic stages (although the students  aren’t actually building the sandcastles or digging the holes, the main idea is there).  This is sometimes also referred to as the Concrete/ Pictorial/Abstract, or CPA model , particularly when linked to maths education in Singapore.

Sandcastles and holes are things that are very familiar to children and are something they will recognise.  The ‘charges’ represent the sandcastles pictorially, and then students can move onto the actual calculations.

I think that this paragraph sums it up for me:

Furthermore, Bruner’s theory allows teachers to be able to engage all students in the learning process regardless of their cognitive level of the concept at the moment. While more advanced students may have a more well-developed symbolic system and can successfully be taught at the symbolic level, other students may need other representations of problems to grasp the material (Brahier, 2009, p. 54). In addition, by having all students go through each of the stages, it builds a foundation for which the student can fall back on if they forget or as they encounter increasingly difficult problems. For these reasons, it is essential that the teacher go through each of the stages with the whole class; however the time spent on each stage can and will vary depending on the student, topic, etc.

 

In year 8, there has been a lot of work using ratio tables this week.  Again, the idea for this is for all students to have the tools to be able to answer the many types of direct proportion questions. In faculty time on Thursday there will be a CPL session on the topic. Please bring your experiences (good or bad) to discuss at the session and any examples of student work that you have been pleased with.

 

GCSE

We are in the process of finalising the first set of mock exams for year 11. The intention is that they are in the week commencing 7^th November.  More information should be available in next week’s bulletin.

Hello Maths,

Thank you to everyone who has uploaded their year 7 intervention data. Your DoLs will let you know next steps for students on the list and will explain their plans for intervention. It will differ from campus to campus.  All intervention will continue until the progress check at the end of half term. The next phase of intervention will be planned based on the results of the progress check.

 

Deadlines:

None this week.

 

Curriculum Issues KS3:

Some questions that have come up this week.

• I’m struggling with the mixed ability classes.

 

This is a difficult one. Many of us have been teaching for a very long time in a strict setted environment so this is a huge shift in many ways.  The rationale for the mixed ability classes is to raise the aspirations and expectations of the students in the lower sets who historically make the least progress, while maintaining the challenge for the faster graspers.

 

The aim is that we teach to the top of the class so that students who would traditionally be in ‘bottom sets’ are exposed to the same content as everyone else. This gives them the opportunity to have good learning behaviours and habits modelled by students who have been more successful previously. It is important for students to see what other students of their age can do, and that actually, they can often succeed at the same things too.

 

As there is an open door policy across the trust, I would encourage you to work together and go and see each other teach the key stage 3 lessons.  I have a year 7 period 1 every day except for Wednesday, and anybody is more than welcome to come along to observe/help out/join in. Please let me know if you would be happy for others to come to your classes, and when those particular classes are.  I understand if you are happy for colleagues to see some classes and not others. Maybe we could make up a timetable of where mixed ability lessons are going on across BBA, ALC and WPC. Obviously, all visits are to be non-judgemental and for support and development reasons only.

 

• The lessons are really difficult and my class are struggling to access them.

 

The lessons were initially written for a mixed ability audience.  If you are teaching in sets, then the lessons will need to be modified.  It is absolutely fine to supplement lessons with a few consolidation lessons as your class requires.  Please don’t think you can’t have the odd quiet ‘death by worksheet lesson’ or other lessons that you have planned from teaching these topics previously.  Some of you have maths twice in one day, so you may well want to have the second lesson as a consolidation lesson. The discussion lessons can be exhausting for the students (and teachers!)

 

It is also important to note that the lesson plans are not intended to be scripts.  I started to write the lessons at my previous school as people were worried about planning for mixed ability classes.  I created the lessons to try and reduce time spent searching for resources, so that planning time could be spent concentrating on delivery and planning questions that would move the learning on for all students in the class.

 

I know that when I have used  Powerpoints or resources made by other people in the past, I have not always known what the intention behind the resource is. The lesson plans are how I would use the resources to teach the lessons. That doesn’t mean that it is necessarily how you would all teach the lessons. Please do use your professional judgement.

 

• Thank you once again to everyone who has sent in resources that they are using to supplement/differentiate the work. Please do send anything as it means people have a first port of call when looking for resources. I have been adding them to each lesson page as ‘supplementary resources’.

 

• Thank you for those of you who have been using the comments section. Please continue to use these, especially if your lesson has gone well, or if you have suggestions for improvements. Remember that our trainee teachers also use these resources, and may like to hear about things that made the lesson go well.

 

KS4:

We are in the process of organising intervention for year 11’s. Your DoL’s will let you know which students will be chosen and what they will be doing. For ALC and WPC, we will be using the Question Level Analysis from the PiXL Curve exams the students sat in June. The results are now out. Joel and Louise will share the results with you. They are in Go 4 Schools so you can check your class results.

We are hoping to have the first set of mock exams in the week starting 8^th November. More details to follow when the dates and times have been confirmed.

 

See you all soon,

Matilde

Hello Maths,

I hope you’ve had a great first week back and that the return to work hasn’t been too much of a shock to the system.  Welcome to all of the new members of the maths departments. I hope you’ve managed to find everything that you need – I feel like I’ve been asking lots of questions as I don’t know where anything is! Luckily, everyone I have approached has gone out of their way to be very helpful, so thank you to those who have been pointing us in the right direction too.

Each week my intention is to write a bulletin to make sure everyone has any dates they need, any maths deadlines that are approaching and any training that may be taking place. I also hope to address any curriculum issues that have been brought to my attention over the week from the different campuses.

If you would like anything to go in the bulletin, please email me and I’ll make sure it’s included.

Have a restful weekend, and hopefully catch up with as many of you as I can next week.

Matilde

Deadlines:

Due to the start of the year, it has taken a bit of time to set up Go 4 Schools.  Thank you to Mike and Becky who have managed to set up the Autumn 1 markbook this week in between all the first week madness!

Please can all year 7 teachers put a tick against any student who requires intervention (highlighted green in the picture below) by the end of Wednesday 14^th September.

The other boxes don’t need to be filled in yet, but instructions of how to fill them in are included in the years 7 and 8 document that Joel, Louise and Nick will have sent/given you before the holidays or on your first day back.

Curriculum Issues KS3:

Some questions that have come up this week.

• Are there any answers?

There are on some, but not all.  If you make some answers for an activity that doesn’t have any, please send them to me so I can share them with everyone. 

• There is a big jump in conceptual understanding between some of the activities for some of my classes.

Please take as long as is necessary to ensure students understand the activities and the transition to the next activity. This may sometimes mean you have to make an intermediate activity, or spent some time consolidating a skill before moving on.  This is absolutely fine, and is to be encouraged. Each ‘lesson’ isn’t necessarily a lesson long. For example, with my year 7, I wrote a comment that my class needed to spend more time practising adding and subtracting decimals, so my lesson 3 may well take several lessons.

If you make your own resources for this, please send them along so I can add them here.  If they are paid for resources, they will need to be password protected. If they have been found on the internet, please acknowledge which website they have been taken from.

• What kind of tasks should be set for homework (ALC AND WPC)?

Thank you to Katie Roper at WPC for sharing a very good homework that can be used alongside the year 8 scheme.  I think that is a great of example of the kind of homework that is useful and relevant. They could also be used as consolidation tasks if not used for homework.  Remember that you can also set MyMaths, and use the Knowledge Organisers at WPC.

 KS4:

There have been no curriculum issues raised so far – please let me know if there are any.

The markbooks in Go 4 schools will be set up to record results of the tests that are timetabled. I will remind people on here when tests are due to be taking place. These tests will be available as links on the schemes when I have written them!

KS5:

Please bear with the timetable/ class changes for now. It always takes a couple of weeks for this to settle.