Nice one Julia!

During my first (of two) sessions at OCRs maths conference at Queen Mary University last week, the matter of students not having enough “resilience” when learning maths came up. There were lots of nods and general agreement to the comment, at which point I shared this idea (I was “winging” this bit, but to be … Read more

From the coalface III

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 … Read more

June 2016 – Best Guess Paper 2

Below you will find out “Best guess” papers for the higher and foundation tiers for the LINEAR Edexcel Mathematics GCSE paper 2 after half term.   Just to reiterate what I’ve put on the front page of the paper, specifically the Higher tier – the paper is made up of topics that we believe are … Read more

Summer 2016 – Hit List

To be honest I think last night/this morning was the MOST NERVOUS I have EVER been before an exam – for reasons unknown to me!. Overall I felt that paper 1 was fair – our “super group” in the main felt that they we well prepared and it gave them a great deal of confidence … Read more

Student talk

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how to manage student talking when they are working – I suppose it’s a result of my quite laid back attitude that I have to work hard at bringing students back on task with a certain group. Most of the time this group are talking about the work … Read more

A little bit of maths – MAY 2016

Here you go … next months calendar. I’ve been emailing this out to parents of our year 11 AND 10 students … seems to have gone down well! The original post containing the sheet for April can be found here and the Solutions (for April) are available here – > Monthly Maths – April – … Read more

Final Countdown

I’ve been a bit remiss with this blogging lark, for which you must forgive me. It’s that time of year when the focus has to be our year 11’s … actually I had a few days away at Easter and since we’ve been back at work I’ve been busy putting together our alternate timetable for … Read more

Edexcel Warwick Conference 2016

Graham emailed out today (do I need to say Graham Cumming? surely its obvious who I mean?) with details about the Edexcel (or is it Pearson?) 6th Mathematics conference at Warwick (my old uni! no .. he didn’t mention this in his email) on Saturday 2 July 2016. He also confirmed that Dr Hannah Fry, … Read more

From the coalface II – Plymouth Challenge …

I came across an idea that All Saints Academy Plymouth is introducing …. this kind of thing is indicative of the kid of school to school sharing that takes place every single day!! I love it so I asked Richard Whitehouse to do me a write up of the idea … do read on and … Read more

Grahams Marvellous Drawers

I’ve written about the delights you’ll find in the cabinets on Edexcel’s emporium before and recently Graham (weird how I only need to mention “Graham” and everyone knows who I mean!!)  emailed out some new booklets that have been made for “DIY type” questions and also one which I know our students have struggled to … Read more

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