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.

Teach My Lesson

This is not a fancy lesson by any standards. But it reflects a typical lesson of Higher maths. The lesson lasts for 50 minutes but by the time the pupils arrive we usually get around 45 minutes class time.

As we are nearing exam time it is important for pupils to understand how long a question should take them so when I set a starter question I try to give an idea of how long the question should take.

I set the class this starter question: