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.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.