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.

Fraction Decimal Percentage Pyramid

After spending a few lessons looking at how to convert between fractions, decimals and percentages I wanted to find a task to check for understanding that was not simply a list of questions. This is what I came up with: pyramids.

The New Term

It’s been a while since I have written a blog post. My last set of posts were written at the end of each week reflecting on what had been happening with my classes during the week. I really enjoyed writing these as it allowed me to look back to see the progress made with each class. I have yet to decide if I will continue with that style of blog post as it was a large time commitment. Maybe a monthly post instead.

In this post I want to share a few of the things that I am looking forward to working on during the next term. I am wary of taking on too much but these are areas which I feel ready to tackle. So here they are:

The week that was (no.24)

This week was a good week. I found out that our department had passed our SQA verification. Whilst I was confident that we would, it was a relief to get official confirmation. Other than that, my week has been spent focussing on senior classes, trying to sort out change of levels and starting the build up to exam time.

My classes have been working on:

• S2: expanding single brackets and stem and leaf diagrams
• S3: factorising quadratics
• N5: vectors
• AH: inverse matrices, transformations and Euclidean Algorithm

Progress of the week

The week that was (no. 23)

It was a four day week this week but it still felt really busy. It was mostly due to having the S4-6 parents evening on Wednesday. I had a full schedule which meant I was talking from 4.30pm to 7pm without stopping. I always find it so useful to chat to parents and wish there was a way for us to be able to do that more often.

My classes have been studying the following:

• S2 – expanding single brackets
• S3 – factorising expressions
• National 5 – vectors
• Advanced higher – matrices

How to teach? Expand single brackets

I was introducing how to expand single bracket to a class this week and it got me thinking. I have taught this hundreds of times and in many different ways but what is the best way? Recently I have used an area model to demonstrate. The examples I might use are:
I really like this method as it shows very clearly why 12(x + 1) = 12x + 12 and leads nicely into using a grid for expanding brackets.

So why did I want to change to a different method?

Whilst exploring Open Middle I came across this problem.

The week that was (no. 22)

This week started with a snow day and ended with a holiday so I was only at work for three days. Even though, it was still a very busy week. We had a mini inspection, with a team from the Council in doing focus groups and observations.

My classes this week were working on:

• S2 – calculating bearings and simplifying expressions

• S3 – foreign currency

• N5 – trigonometric identities and percentages

• AH – no lessons this week since I only see them on Mon and Fri

The week that was (no. 21)

This week saw the return of my senior classes after study leave. This meant I was back to a very busy timetable. It can be tough returning prelims to pupils. It’s great if they have done well as there are big smiles but it is tricky if they haven’t done well. I become torn between the sympathetic tone of “it was a tough paper, don’t get too upset by it” and the harsher tone of “if you had actually worked hard you might have done better”. 

The week that was (no. 20)

This week was a quiet teaching week – I taught 10 lessons out of 33. This was due to senior classes being on study leave. While I wasn’t teaching many lessons I was still extremely busy. I attended a meeting about emotion coaching, had two departmental meetings and a link meeting with my line manager. I managed to get some development work done which I had been struggling to find time to do previously.

Here’s what my classes (that I had this week) were doing:

• S2 – review of decimals and fractions
• S3 – review of trigonometry and circle and assessments

The week that was (no. 19)

This week was a little different from usual. The S4-6 pupils were on study leave for their prelims which meant I didn’t have my N5 classes or my Advanced Higher class. It did mean though that I had a large pile of prelims to mark. Marking prelims can often be frustrating as you see pupils making so many mistakes (some careless and others not) and not answering questions you know they can do. It can make you feel like you haven’t taught them anything over the past few months. However, there are always others which make you smile especially when you see a piece of working that you didn’t expect. I also had to take an S1 class this week to cover for a colleague who was on a school trip all week.