This is going to be one of my bullet point blogs (yes!! they’re back!!) as a bit of a catch up; When I wasn’t sure anyone was actually reading this shiz, I felt I could just whitter on and even though its now getting a massive number of hits I don’t want to get inhibited, or to start watching my P’s and Q’s,  so the following is in no particular order and are just some random thoughts as I prepare for the week ahead:

  • It would appear that someone stole my weekend and I “ain’t ‘appy” about it .. I blinked and now it’s gone!
  • I am however feeling pretty good about a number of things:
    • last weeks Higher papers were pretty nice for our students that have been doing revision based around the JustMaths Top40 – when I say “our students” I also mean lots of “yours” too as the JustMaths Online family continues to grow. There was about 80 marks to be had on topics that are covered by Seagers’ tutorials, and my resources for these 40 topics, which for many students means that the golden “C” is achievable, but also for those going for “B and beyond” they are well on their way – so its not just aimed at those so called (I hate this phrase … so deep breath!) borderline students.
    • I’ve received a few emails this weekend saying some amazing things about the resources and I am genuinely chuffed to bits that people like what we do, and the resource bank will continue to grow as we incorporate functional skills type topics too.
  • I put a shout out to see if anyone was interested in pooling ideas about a new scheme of work in view of the new subject content that was published last weekend and there are nearly 40 people that want to get involved. At this stage we are just gathering ideas and themes – essentially I have a meeting where I will be talking to someone from an exam board, in a couple of weeks (as part of my day job) and will hopefully have a better idea of when they will be publishing full specs and we can then get “a wriggle on”. Initial thoughts suggest that we should be looking at a 3 year SOW as a minimum, but ideally it should incorporate KS3 too, and there is a distinct theme that it should be online and interactive too.
  • There are also some other goings-on that mean I can kill two birds, so to speak with this point – I’ve had a few emails about the 5 min lesson plan I put together (here). I’ve adapted @TeacherToolkit’s fabulous original version for a number of reasons (1) we use a TEEP model of teaching so had to tick certain boxes (2) I wanted it to complete a cycle so that it finished with homework as that’s usually how I end my lessons and (3) I wanted to have mine as a portrait document. Several people were curious about “Stickability” which is something that I struggled with to start with. The below is a plan that I put together for a lesson on histograms, and essentially “stickability” is the “one thing” I want the students to remember … as simple as that … if it was expanding double brackets I might have written “Parrot method”. This might not be the original intention when Ross put the 5 min plan together, but its my interpretation and seems to work (well it does for me anyway)…

plan

Well, so much for being bullet point (nuff said)… on that note … I’m off!!