Jeez Louise!

24 May 2014 | Blog

At the back end of 2013 the government published their proposed programmes of study for both KS3 and KS4 Maths, and then subsequently opened a consultation to these proposals which closed on 3rd February 2014. I have previously posted a summary of the content changes in terms (here’s the link) in terms of what is moving from ... Read more

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I never thought…

21 May 2014 | Blog

In my adult working life of a little over 22 years (I had part-time bar/waitressing jobs whilst at school/university but am not including those!) I have had 5 jobs and so have been through leaving jobs four times. The first time was quite surreal  as I’d already started out in the corporate world whilst we still ... Read more

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Mental Maths #2

19 May 2014 | Blog

Once again some of our resources have been featured in the Guardian “how to teach” series, this time about mental maths (link here: How to teach: Mental Maths) I do however have quite strong thoughts (me? strong opinions? who’d guess that?)  on the subject. Mental maths is a major component in a students’ toolkit of mathematical knowledge but ... Read more

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Scatter gun approach

19 May 2014 | Blog

  Last week my two year 11 classes that I teach as part of my day job started their exams, and so our lessons are very much hit and miss in terms of whether there will be 32 of them or 2 (there was only 2, for one of my lessons today). The entire year group are now following a revision ... Read more

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… and they’re off ..

11 May 2014 | Blog

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 ... Read more

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Maths that’s Mental

8 May 2014 | BlogResourcesTeaching

I’ve been asked for some ideas about mental maths and this got me really thinking about the range of abilities I’ve encountered and also how a students’ confidence is affected when they aren’t as quick doing “sums” than others in the group.  You will be pleased to hear I’ve come to a conclusion (I don’t have ... Read more

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Guess what I’m doing?

6 May 2014 | 5 - Misc.BlogTeaching

You will never guess what I’m doing with year 11 at the minute … damn! you guessed! … revision! I came across some connect 4’s that I’d put together last year and they went down really well today … so well in fact that the group got through all three of them and so got ... Read more

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More than a teacher

6 May 2014 | Blog

So lets get the apology over and done with … this is a rant about nothing in particular! If you are of a sensitive nature I suggest you stop reading now! Seriously … stop!! Ok then … those of you that are still with me, let’s roll back a few years: When we owned a ... Read more

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Sunday morning

4 May 2014 | Blog

I have spent the last hour doing what can only be described as one of the best things I have ever done as a teacher … and no! its not enjoying the time off! In January our students sat a mock maths exam and after my set 2 had done the usual “red, amber, green” ... Read more

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Well excited!

2 May 2014 | BlogTeaching

I have been keeping a low profile this week for a number of reasons, one of which for the last couple of days has been flu .. not your run of the mill “man flu” but proper red nose, snot streaming, coughing … you get the idea? I could go on if you don’t! The ... Read more

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