My name is Sam and I am part of the King Solomon Academy Maths department. Bruno has asked us to write on his blog about an area of personal development in maths teaching. As part of the team I get the opportunity to work in a mixed ability setting. This …
“Hi Bruno, BBC are in reception for you.”
Well, there’s an email I didn’t think I’d ever receive. Who could it be and why were they here to see me and not the headteacher? It can be strange what goes through my head. “I’m too young to meet Michael Aspel just yet. Pretty sure I’m not going to …
Making ‘Tri-axes’ in the Woodwork Room
Trying to picture 3D shapes in your head and ‘spin’ them round for a different view is hard enough for many people. Which is why asking pupils to visualise 3D coordinates from a 2D representation, let alone perform any calculations from them, is even less straightforward. Realising this, my colleague …
Language Revelation
I was in a training session today that gave me such a revelation. One of those I-see-the-world-in-a-different-way-now moments – that’s how much it rocked my world. The trainer, Carly Biggam from ARK, set us up in groups of three: one speaker, one listener and one observer. The activity was very …
Classic mistakes brought to you by the Simpsons
Here’s how I see it, it’s easier to learn from the maths mistakes of others than from your own. Probably because there’s an emotional association with making a mistake, I find pupils jump at the chance to dissect and discuss the root of misconceptions of others, and by others I …
LOGO meets Scratch (thanks Blockly and David Wees)
A while back I wrote about using LOGO as entry route for pupils into programming. I guess many of you have been thinking of ways of doing the same. One very clever teacher based in Canada, has taken some Google Code called Blockly and created a very cool LOGO/Scratch mash-up. …
Pleased with this animation…division-using-place-value-blocks
We know that physical and visual cues can help learners – objects such as tokens, cards, Dienes blocks, Cuisinaire rods, tiles, straws, beakers, multi-link cubes, string, Lego men (!) or loads of other props are great for the pupils to play with. That said, you have to show them first …
My First-Week-Back Goal: Hook, Line and Sinker
I’m writing this article in response to a Blog Initiation Drive organised by all the good guys in the maths edublogging jungle. It’s not just my first week back, it’s also my pupils’ first week at secondary school. For the fourth consecutive year, I find myself preparing to teach the …
Times Tables Rock Stars
In my year 7 classes at the start of every year, it’s a sad truth that not all of them know their times tables off by heart. By not having this basic building block, problem-solving later on in maths is always going to be light on solving and big on …
Rolling Numbers
At KSA we practise times tables through rolling numbers (call-and-response chanting the times tables while counting off on our fingers as we go). The physical movement combined with the catchy chants help to energise the class, give us the chance to be loud in maths (that’s a good thing) and …
Animated Mini Maths Lessons Using xtranormal.com
We’ve just run a school-wide competition for the best animated mini maths lessons. Pairs of pupils composed short animations (using www.xtranormal.com*) on a maths objective of their choice. The animation had to meet the following criteria: It had explain a particular learning objective from the year so far It had …
Using ActivInspire to Make Screencasted Videos
If you have a Promethean interactive whiteboard at your school, the chances are you will have ActivInspire installed on the teacher computers too. It’s the software you use for building and teaching lessons with tools for drawing shapes, handwriting, placing images, writing text, etc. It also comes with a useful …
Getting pupils into LOGO
One of my memories of having fun learning maths was being shown how to control a ‘turtle’ so that it traced a path of my choosing across the computer screen. Maybe because I got to be the boss of something or because the learning curve was short and shallow, …
Pencil Pledge
The Pencil Pledge is a short chant we do to get fired up before getting on with independent work. These are the words: Teacher: Pencils ready! Class: [Bang table with pencil 2 times and then shoot your arm in the air] Teacher: This is my pencil! Class: This is my …
