This week – no 9 & 10

I missed writing my blog post last week due to other commitments but am back for week 10. It has been a funny week at work. Lots of uncertainty over Coronavirus and other work related issues. However, I have enjoyed teaching my classes this week after a low spell.

So here’s what my classes were doing last week:

This week – no.8

This week was a pretty poor teaching week for me. I felt that most of my lessons were pretty lacklustre. I think the problem was that all my time was taken up with other school related tasks that my own planning got put to the end of my list. I don’t like when this happens but it’s the reality that occurs sometimes. After a tough week I was feeling like I didn’t want to attend the Moray Maths Conference on Saturday. However, I am really glad I went. The conference reenergised me and I came away with lots of ideas to implement. My only concern is that I won’t have time to do this – but I must try to make time as it is important to focus on teaching and learning.

So this post I am going to write about my takeaways from the conference instead of my lessons from the past week. Hopefully there is something useful for other teachers to takeaway too.

This week – no.7

This week was one of those weeks where time disappears so fast and the to-do-list seems endless. I had lots of extra prep this week as a few in the department were off for a few days. I’m not very efficient at sorting cover work and it takes me twice as long as it probably should. It was also the senior parents evening (4.30-7pm) which took it out of me. By the last few appointments I’m not sure I was speaking in coherent sentences.

So, here’s what my classes were doing this week – although there were a few disruptions as I was running between various classrooms checking on other classes.

This week – no.6

Monday was a holiday as part of our February break then on Tuesday it was back to work. I always find shorter teaching weeks odd as they feel longer somehow. I had a visit to one of our local primary schools to meet the p7s. I always enjoy seeing primary classes as they are so different to high school classes. One interesting part was that many of the pupils were reluctant to explain how they got an answer, claiming they guessed rather than be willing to talk through their method. Something to watch out for with our new S1s in August.

So here’s what my classes have been doing:

S2 – we were continuing our work with single brackets. To introduce solving equations with a bracket I showed this example with two solutions.

The class spent a few minutes considering how each solution worked and then discussed

This week – no.5

This week was a slightly short week with us having Friday off as part of our February break. Although I did have reports due, a PT meeting on Wednesday morning, a staff meeting after work on Wednesday and study club after school on Thursday so I was kept busy and it felt like I had worked a full week.

Here’s what my classes were doing this week.

S2 – this week we were focussing on expanding single brackets. As a review from last week I set this as the starter.

This week – no.4

After the calm of having fewer classes for the past two weeks it was back to full on teaching this week. Things were even busier with a staff member off and having to cover classes.

Here’s the overview of the past week:

S2 – we completed our work on volume and surface area with further practice of mixed questions. I displayed the answers to the questions on the board to provide a self-check for the pupils. (Questions taken from http://www.goteachmaths.co.uk).

This week – no.3

It was the second week of prelim study leave for our senior pupils so I had a reduced teaching timetable again. This gave me time to attend a meeting with our Primary head teachers to discuss numeracy and how we are going to work more collaboratively to try to raise attainment. It was a really productive meeting and I now have scheduled visits to primary schools to observe their teaching and help with numeracy lessons. Hopefully this is a positive step forward. I also attended training on how to use data from the SNSAs (Scottish National Standardised Assessments) to help raise attainment. Along with prelim marking, verification and discussions about results, it was a busy week.

This week – no.2

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 week – no.1

Last year I started writing a weekly post on what had been happening in my classroom that week. I managed to keep this going for 25 weeks then I stopped. I can’t remember why. I really enjoyed reflecting on my week and so am going to start it up again.

First week of 2020 and the school was calm. It had been a tough few weeks in the run up to Christmas so it was nice to finish the week feeling positive again about my job.

Here’s what my classes were doing:

S1 – I have a class for one period a week to provide extra numeracy. I’ve found that often my pupils are ok with completing calculations but struggle when faced with contextual problems and reading instructions. For our first lesson I wanted to see exactly how well my new class could follow instructions so I found this task in a book we have in the department.

The class took well to the initial task but as expected, stumbled when faced with reading and interpreting the follow on instructions. This meant that I was giving far more input than really should have been given. Hopefully as the weeks go on I can work on improving this area with my class.

Teaching Angles – Part 2

In my last post I wrote about my week of lessons about angles with my S1 class. You can read about it here.

The next focus of our angles work was angles in triangles. We spent a lesson looking at calculating missing angles in scalene, right and isosceles triangles. Most of the questions I set were from a school textbook but for extension I used these sheets from Don Steward.