UPDATED 6th June 2013
There have been some interesting tweets and blogs recently about students inability to recall prior learning after a period of time and some people would suggest that students should (or shouldn’t) move on with their learning once they have “mastered” a topic or keep working on it, until they have “got it”. I understand the frustrations of having a scheme of work and seemingly ploughing on even if students haven’t yet mastered a topic but I can also see the other side of the coin, where you have students that have clearly mastered a topic yet are being held back if we don’t move on – managing the learning of 32 individuals who progress at different rates is tough, and this, along with the analysis I’ve done of some test results (based on the Edexcel 2013 Higher Linear papers) has got me thinking about how to address the obvious “gaps” in some of the students knowledge.  It was interesting to see that there were some obvious “whole class” gaps but also lots of gaps with specific students – so for the next two weeks, together with my PGCE student we are going to get the students working on these gaps using their own analysis as their guide.
So for example where a student didn’t get full marks on question 1 (Multiplying decimals)  they will work through this worksheet that has a “how to” section, and then some questions to practice on, some in the style of our must, should and could worksheets (if it works for that specific topic) which get more challenging down the page, so they can choose to work straight down or if they feel they need the practice they can work across then down and are self checking too as the answers are on the sheet.
On the reverse of the sheet there are one or two exam questions and a section for them to complete when they are ready to have it assessed. The idea being that they cant move on to the next topic until they have mastered the current one.
Initially I am going to work on the gaps that I don’t think the students should have, especially as I know these groups really well, so may not end up with every question having a worksheet. I am also thinking that for my 3 or 4 high fliers I am going to get them to produce some for me on the areas that they need to work on as that’s right up their street. Producing these will be a lot of work, but I think it will be worth the effort and I will end up with a suite of worksheets that are differentiated, self checking (in some cases) and also provides some meaningful AFL tailored to my specific students’ needs. These will be worksheets that I can use for any of the topics in the future too. As I produce these I will update this post and also add them to the free stuff page:
NON CALCULATOR PAPER
QUESTION 1 – Multiplying decimals worksheet
QUESTION 2 – Scatter Graphs worksheet
QUESTION 3 – Questionnaires worksheet
QUESTION 5 – Sequences worksheet
QUESTION 7 – Like terms and solving equations worksheet
QUESTION 9 – Laws of indices worksheet
QUESTION 10 – Angle Facts with parallel lines worksheet
QUESTION 12 – Ratio worksheet
NEW QUESTION 13 – Interior/Exterior angles worksheet
QUESTION 16 – Standard form worksheet
CALCULATOR PAPER
QUESTION 1 – Stem and Leaf worksheet
QUESTION 2 – Proportion worksheet
NEW QUESTION 5 – Circles worksheet
QUESTIONÂ 8 – Trial & Improvement worksheet
QUESTION 12 – Inequalities worksheet
I am going to continue making these for both papers and will hopefully get quite a lot of questions done ready for the start of the final half term, (and more importantly in time for the forthcoming exams) if people are interested, and I am thinking that I start putting the same together for EVERY question following the summer papers which can be used in conjunction with my ResultsPlus template we will be able to provide our students with really targeted resources tailored to them. Now that will be superb … even if I do say so myself!!
PERSONAL NOTE ALERT:
If you have read this far, you will probably be one of the many people that sent me their thoughts and virtual hugs over the last few weeks whilst I have been dealing with my fathers illness and him subsequently passing away – Thank you so much for your thoughts .. it helped. The attached is the Eulogy I read at his funeral last week, and I’m not posting it for sympathy .. I genuinely want to mark his passing away. It still hurts.
