I get sent ideas all the time about ideas from other people – usually as a result of me liking something on Twitter and then asking if I can steal magpie their ideas. You know I have this inbox that keeps flipping growing but I promise I will get round to sharing them all at some point – I’m working backwards through them at the moment. 

It’s going to take me some time because recently I’ve become conscious of the need to have a life outside work and JustMaths (if I let it BOTH could become all-encompassing and recently I’ve been reminded that life is just too short). I mean having a life all-year-around and not just during the holidays (JM doesn’t stop for us when school is out) and if that means meeting up with mates when my instinct is “oh I can’t be ar5ed and I’d really like to just in “veg” out” or making time to do something other than work a couple of nights a week when I know that I could find something to do then so be it. Getting a balance is something that I’m really crap at – I tend to give everything I have to whatever I set my mind to and teaching is one of those jobs that you can always find something to do and so I needed to find something that was just for “me”, something that was mine and mine alone. In my insanity I started running again about 7 weeks ago (don’t laugh! and shhhh … I haven’t told anyone because I’m really self-conscious about it having had a gap of about 8 years and I’m really rubbish at it! but I’m persevering!) I’m also spending more time doing stuff with my hubbie around the house – I actually enjoy spending time with him (weird! I know!) and I have a long-term plan that involves putting my house on the market in the next couple of years (in the first 3 years of our marriage we moved 7 times but have been in our current one 10 years) and I know that in order to achieve what I want, I have to start making in-roads now.

Wow … my blogging Tourette’s really kicked in there didn’t it??

Anyway, I’ve digressed so back to the point … Gayle Head who is the Head of Maths at Mayfield School in Portsmouth sent me the documents she used to make displays in their classrooms. I have a problem solving display in my classroom but it is sooooooo boring and I needed some inspiration. According to Gayle the department  are focussing on problem solving strategies:

“The idea is that there are 6 strategies we have identified that will be useful to them. We then, over two terms had 6 ‘problem days’ in the dept. where all maths lessons on that day (except year 11) were about solving problems and getting pupils to use that specific strategy. We used resources from the Pearson problem solving course a member of our team went on.

This half term we have then had days where pupils were just given a selection of problems where they need to choose a strategy. We have found “diagrams” and “x as unknown” most useful. However the higher attaining sets seemed to use flow diagrams a lot.”

Gayle has been kind enough to send me photos and also the documents she used to produce the text (which you can find here->  Problem Solvers display). She has also included (on the last page) a bookmark that the pupils glue into their books as a support (I love this idea!) and says that they are something they’re hoping to move away from but at this stage they can fill in all the boxes and it seems to “help them collect their thoughts”.

Having attended sessions in the past about specific problem-solving strategies I found it interesting that the advice at the time, was to focus on a specific strategy as a learning objective within lots of different concepts that you know students can “nail” and then refer back to the strategies in new topics as time goes on. So for example you would teach “bar models” using say ratio and fractions and anything else you know they can do that would apply – the important thing is that the focus is using bar-models  and not the other maths. The thinking is that this strategy can then be applied to other “new” topics when appropriate – I sort of get it, in that if you only introduce bar models with say, ratio, the students don’t make the link that the strategy is transferable in other contexts, which is great where you take on groups later in their schooling. To be honest with my year 8’s (a higher attaining set) that I have taught for 2 years now, I use what I call arrow diagrams (you know the arrows you draw linking equivalent fractions) all the time and haven’t specifically taught them but lots of the students used them a few weeks ago when we did some work on reverse percentages (we used bar models first) and then drew arrows to find 1% then 100% … it was fab to see how skills such as these can become embedded over time.

I love Gayle’s display and the idea of having “superhero” strategies. Definitely something I am going to do to my boring board when I’ve got some time over the summer!