Just a thought … yesterday was the first of our Saturday school sessions. As the first one, my plan was to cover 3 topics where I did a worked example on the board with them and then they got to work on similar problems themselves – nothing too exciting but it’s a way of setting out expectations from day 1 – its easier to go upwards on the “fun” scale than it is to move downwards without a kickback. I know that keeping students on task can sometimes be a challenge but I want them to get something out of the sessions and after seeing an idea on twitter I put the attached sheet together – the idea being that for each question they had 5 minutes to put their solution in one of the sections.

I printed onto A3 sheets (who doesnt love “super sized” worksheets?)  and it worked really well. It also had the added benefit that most of them had to think about the layout of their working out – a note of caution though – I wouldnt use for simple 1 mark type questions as 5 minutes would be way too much time but is ideal for those bigger 4, 5 or even 6 mark questions.