This time I’m “grrr’ing” (it IS now a word!) with laughter. Last night the JustMaths team met up to finalise some things for the launch of the Super60 next weekend and the boys thought it would be funny to write this post …. yes, I was there but thought they were busy doing “proper” work. The photo could only have been funnier if I was in the background, oblivious to what they were doing buying them beer (we weren’t drinking! we never do when we have a JM meetings!). They also then went on to hack the twitter account!

So the end of the holidays are here. We had inset Friday which culminated in a visit to the doctors for me early evening: a few days ago I opened the bathroom door but left my foot in the way and walloped my eyebrow with the edge of the door. I didn’t think anything of it until I had the worlds worst headache on Thursday night after a “we will fight the quarry on our doorstep” public meeting in the village hall which finished about 9pm. I put it down to being annoyed that the district council are even considering this idea when it will rip the heart out of our little village and the fact that I had just finished taking painkillers that day for a torn calf muscle meant that I wouldn’t have noticed any earlier headaches! Even when I woke up at 4am with a headache and feeling sick from the pain I didn’t think anything of it. Friday morning carried on and the pain got worse as did the nausea! Once I’d gotten through to a doctor they said to get there as soon as I could (which for me meant after work .. not sure I got much done to be honest!) Anyway, I’ve not done any damage and I have more painkillers! Brilliant!

Monday we have only have year 7 and 9 in school so I only have 1 lesson with year 7 to plan. It’s not going to be a “doss day” though – it was decided that Maths and English would do some activities in the hall with year 9 for one of the periods of the day. It’s a sort of carousel of  activities, where they go around doing different things for 5 minutes and then move on : in Maths we have decided to focus on some of those “skills” that students can always need practice with, such as using a calculator, a protractor, compasses and estimating/reading scales. I get to do the “using a protractor” one and so have had to come up with an activity.

I’ve been thinking that I want to inject an element of fun – as this is a skill that students don’t do very often and once they’ve got the hang of it again they are away! So I’ve done 27 cards (2 to an A4 sheet) with angles on and a code breaker worksheet. Each card relates to a box on the Measuring angles worksheet, they measure the angle and then write the letter that it relates to. I only get 5 minutes so hopefully we can get some competition going and get them measuring lots and lots of angles. I’m happy to share the ” clue cards ” (they aren’t very pretty – I’ve had to scan them as the angles had to be hand drawn but you’ll get the idea!). What I’ve done is build in the difficulty (they aren’t difficult really though!) in terms of having the angles that need to be measured in different reference points and added in things like “size of the two equal angles”, “the size of the largest angle”.

You will note that they start with angles from the 12 o’clock position, this is because of the type of protractors we use – as a department we all use the “full circle” protractors and the same ones ( Tarquin circular protractors ) are provided for exams too (because I know I’ll get asked what type we use !). After all, it is the little things like consistent equipment across a school/department that can make a difference. They aren’t cheap (which is unusual for Seager) but we’ve just found them to be much more student-friendly!

As usual, you can choose to ignore the idea but thought I’d share because I’m quite excited as usually this is a topic that I’d find really dry.