I felt like a part time teacher this week. Our senior pupils were out of school on study leave so I only had my S2, S3 classes plus my S1 numeracy period. However on Wednesday there was a power cut so the school was closed by 12pm. This meant I only actually taught 7 periods in the past week. Despite that I was still busy – marking prelims, attending department meeting and SLT link meeting, doing lunch duty and more.
So here’s what my classes were doing this week:
S2 – On Monday before starting the new topic we did a mini test on bearings. This was a topic we covered last month and I wanted to review the topic and see what the class could remember. For our mini tests I use questions from Diagnostic Questions. I find them so useful for identifying misconceptions. There are five questions that the class complete independently then we discuss the answers. What I find the most useful about the multiple choice questions is discussing how someone could have chosen an incorrect answer. Pupils show me using their fingers how many they got right so instant feedback for me. Here’s a couple of the questions we did:
We then started work on volume and surface area. To start thinking about volume the class were drawing cuboids on isometric paper then working out how many cubes it would take to make the cuboid. Some pupils used cubes to make the cuboid so they could actually count the cubes. Then we thought about how we could find the volume without drawing. Most pupils quickly spotted that you could multiply to find the number of cubes on top layer then multiply by number of rows which then led to the formula V = lbh.
As well as some basic practice questions which had whole numbers, decimals and fractions, the class tackled two problems from Open Middle.
The first problem proved interesting as one pupil instantly declared “that’s easy” and produced an answer of 98 x 76 x 54. He was then surprised when others said they had larger answers. “But I’ve used the highest numbers” he claimed. It wasn’t until he really thought about it he realised that the 9, 8 and 7 needed to be the tens in each number.
Finally this week the class worked with surface area. I put up a few cuboids on the board for them to find the surface area and volume. Remembering that I wanted the class to have more time on problem solving I gave the class this sheet made up of questions from Don Steward. They tackled it well and I need to remember to keep up the focus on reasoning questions.
S3 – we were having a numeracy review this week. We started our review with percentages, specifically increase/decrease. We practiced this by using example problem pairs. I found this a particularly useful as a good number of my S3 switch off and even though they are not talking they are not listening and paying attention to explanations. Example problem pairs means there is no opt out and everyone has to try.
The class did their weekly Number Up task from Mathsbox and on Friday we had a class quiz reviewing the work of the week. The class worked in pairs and completed questions on mini whiteboards. For each question the pairs earned two points if answered correctly first time and one point if they needed a second attempt. This motivated the pupils to think through their answer before submitting it as they didn’t want to lose a point. It gave real meaning to checking your work!
Due to the power cut I did not have my S1 numeracy group so the task they were going to do will be complete next week.
Next week will be another quiet teaching week but I will have plenty to do analysing prelim results and discussing pupil pathways.
fractionfanatic 