Let’s just say its been an “interesting” week and leave it at that – you can surmise all you want as to what that actually means, and depending on your general outlook and pre-disposition you will be thinking either (a) “oooh interesting is good and sounds exciting!” or (b) “interesting sounds like a cynical way of saying a bucket of poo!”. Whatever you decide … lets just make it clear you’re making your own decision and I haven’t actually said anything!
Yesterday I got to meet yet another tweacher in London doing some “stuff” with Pearson (I wonder if I can name and shame? – she knows who she is and is probably smirking right now reading this!) Anyway, she was exactly like I’d imagined: really lively, passionate about teaching and so full of energy – I’d sort of even got the accent “bang on” too, but have to admit that at one point I had a chuckle to myself wondering what a “bore lake” was when it dawned on me, and I am sure I must have appeared slightly deranged (I’m still hoping she didn’t notice!). It wasn’t really a “jolly” as with all these things, you don’t really get to chat about anything other than the task in hand, and afterwards I had to rush off to find my hubbie as I’d somehow managed to sweet-talk him into coming down to London so that we could spend some “actual” time together (I think it helped that the weather forecast was not good for golfing!) and we ended up spending a fair few hours pottering around the British Museum … very exciting to see the Rosetta Stone, and Elgin Marbles, but even more amazing was the architecture. Just breath-taking.
Its not been all fun! fun! fun! Its that time of year when schools are re-looking at their student planners and the school where I’ll be working at from September is no different, so we’ve been looking at the maths pages. The original content ideas are Seagers and twitter has done its “thang” too – however it is obvious that we all have different perceptions of the usefulness of student planners and what information should be included. Being brutally honest I rarely get students to refer to them (apart from their times tables and I question using them for that!). I do however suspect that this might be because when the planners were re-introduced at work, to the students, I was a year 12 tutor and so haven’t come into much direct contact with them!. Anyway, in the spirit of sharing, if you’re looking to change your maths pages, I have put the publisher file here Dropbox file and you can change/update accordingly – please note that there are TWO pages:
Looking forward. From tomorrow my year 11 classes will be very much “all over the place” as the exams start – I know some of you have already said goodbye to your students on Friday in order for them to go off on “study leave” however, at the school where I work in my “day job” nothing changes for our students: they will come into school and they either have an exam, a revision session for a forthcoming exam or have to attend normal lessons (at least until after half term!). If you are one my colleagues reading this … the following is just my blathering about how I like to plan my lessons at this time of year – its not a whinge (#justsaying). I have asked who has what exams this week, when I would normally be teaching them so I have a “rough” idea of whether I am expecting single or double digit class sizes and am actually in the middle of planning accordingly. To be honest I quite like the opportunity of working with smaller groups (i.e. whoever turns up at my door) but planning for it is a bit “hit and miss” as I genuinely don’t know who it will be, and I like to tailor the topic to what they would like to go through. If I am brutally honest I sort of “play the odds” by offering them a choice of up to 5 topics that I know all students could do with doing, based on their last assessment and plan those accordingly, so I am not totally “winging” it. Just do me a favour and don’t tell them that!
Have a great week everyone!
