MathsClass

Things are tough at my school at the moment, tougher than normal. There are many reasons for that, this is not the post to discuss them though.

Each morning this week, I’ve felt the strain arriving at school to consider what lies ahead.

One thing that has allowed me to get in to the day is a review of my lessons for that day. Because, as I’ve been reminded many times and often remind myself, you may not be able to control what is happening around your school, but you can certainly define and lead the events in your classroom. So, obviously, good lessons are the key.

For new teachers, my advice would be – “good” doesn’t have to mean the latest set of buzzwords – “constructivist/PBL/Web 2.0/student-centred”. In my 3rd and 4th years, I felt this imaginary pressure (or even more like failure) because I was not implementing super-mastery-pedagogically fantastic lessons in my classes. These are important ideas that can be integrated into you lessons. But to me, the essentials of a lesson are a well-structured, clearly defined, attainable lesson that allows students to engage and achieve.

Today, for me it was as simple as organising some chance words on cards, and then reviewing together (SMART Notebook file on ‘chance’ words). Building some bridges. A fairly bland lesson on an algebraic technique made a little more interesting with some to and fro and the occassional “lolly question”. Finally, Year 8 made some quadrilaterals to investigate their properties – all structured and colour-coded.

Good lessons can be many things, keep striving for great lessons.

After 2 terms as a relieving Head Teacher, moving back to the normal classroom teacher load has been a bit of a shock. Even with faculty matters, I found myself achieving more of the extra things as a Head Teacher.

This weekend, after Friday night…, I did no “teaching work” – it was great. Family just takes priority. So, I was thinking, how do others prioritise the extra bits?

In my fifth year, the basic bits of teaching all fit to together well. But there’s this list of “like to do” extras: help other teachers with tech, develop more engaging lessons/units around media tech, overhaul assessment.

I guess it’s just a matter of “do what you can” and keeping things in balance.

For Australian teachers with access to objects from The Le@rning Federation, the resource Bridge Builder is a nice way to deal with geometric patterns and finding the algebraic rule.

Using resources like this, I find it helpful to have a recording sheet for my students. Seems like a contradiction to have a worksheet for an online activity, but without it I find the students skip through tasks and I can’t really determine whether they have made a proper attempt.

The worksheet below is a simple recording sheet for the Bridge Builder resources. For NSW DET teachers, it includes the Save Codes that work with TaLe4Students.

It’s that time of year again… that’s right… Year 8 solving equations.

What’s more, this is the toughest Year 8 class I have taught, ever.

We did a quiz today, just to see how a topic that we completed a week ago had fared. For some, great, in fact better than I expected. But, on the other hand, there are others who did not solve b + 7 = 23.

I wandered back to my blog, where I wrote Teaching Equations:

My conclusion from looking at this task – when it comes to assessment, many of these students reverted to prior knowledge gained in primary school rather than a more formal process they’ve seen this year.

My problem this year, for some the prior knowledge required to solve a one-step equation didn’t really exist. The idea of an opposite operation or even reading the equation b + 7 = 23 in a simple way “what plus 7 will equal 23” was lacking.

Another little quiz next week, one-step’s only for the strugglers, trickier stuff for those that got it.

Flummoxed. Again.

Welcome to the new look MathsClass site.

(If you’re in an RSS reader or elsewhere, you might want to pop over to the site in your browser to see what I’m talking about.)

This brings my three sites into line with a common design and a “network bar” at the top to allow you to quickly jump to each site.

I should add that this site, MathsKit and MathsLinks all look better in Firefox, Safari and Chrome than they do in Internet Explorer.