OK so it’s not mid-week yet but I have my last ever parish council meeting tomorrow (it’s the annual general meeting so not an “actual” meeting) and I will officially no longer be Councillor Muldowney having made the decision to not stand at the next election so won’t be around to do my usual midweek blog post. When I say “usual” that’s actually a misnomer because it’s also been a while since I posted midweek under the guise of it being an update post so I’m promising that normal service will now resume.
A couple of weeks ago I blogged (the “crusts” blog post -> HERE ) about how I want to introduce some form of “problem solving” questions into my bread and butter worksheets (original post HERE ) and I’ve been using them with my year 9 and 10’s but to be honest the first reaction was very much “where do we start?” and involves lots of questioning from me about what strategies they can use/what they know and how to approach the question. To be fair they have had a really good go at them without any help and there have been some really amazing “A-HA” moments. The Maths team at Edexcel then sent out a link to some “Bronze, Silver and Gold” papers (they’re on the emporium) in which AO2 and AO3 style questions have been collated and there are 3 versions of each paper, with the most basic version breaking down the problem into steps and then the highest version is “just” the question with no scaffolding whatsoever. I’ve been working through them myself and they are flipping brilliant!! These papers have got me thinking about how I can work with the students to build up a “strategy bank” and also strengthen their resilience so that they don’t just give up when it’s tough so I’m aiming to incorporate some form of scaffolding into the questions (there will also be a version without this on) to help with this.
Original
With hints
All of this has got me thinking about a new display … shhh … don’t tell Seager because it’ll probably involve some colour printing and laminating!! I want to have a board on which “we” can record useful strategies that the students can refer to . I’m thinking it’ll be graffiti style where they write the idea on the wall with their name next to it … it’ll probably be called my “Problem Solving STUCK Wall” … still thinking on that one.
Additionally I’ve made another “boarding card” to check prior knowledge (Blog Post – > CLICK HERE )… this one is for Pythagoras’ Theorem. This evening me and Seager have been having an email “discussion” about whether or not you would want to check understanding of rounding (yes we really are THAT sad!!). I’d want to do this because they will have to round answers anyway and if they couldn’t recall how to do it I may “slip” in a lesson beforehand. I wouldn’t want them to think that rounding and Pythag were inextricably linked and then the teaching of Pythag goes off on a tangent about rounding. I think I’ve persuaded him that I’m right (its not often I do that so I’ll bathe in the glory!!)
Two things of note due soon (1) Results from the Ofqual research programme which means more SAMs published shortly thereafter no doubt and (2) Ofsted Dashboard gets updated!
On that note … I’m off (I have lessons to plan don’t you know!) .. enjoy the rest of the week.
