#10minwin AND & BECAUSE games

Hannah has been running a number of 15 minute INSET sessions before school and my first today was on Higher Order Questioning.

I particularly like the quick questioning technique of using and... and... and... as you pass between students to encourage them to come up with lots of ideas.
To encourage higher ordering thinking, you can change to because... because... because...

The beauty of this, it seems, is that you can switch between and / because / because.. because depending on which student you are asking to promote different levels of thinking on any given topic.

Here's how I might use it in a Pythagoras / Trigonometry question.

Stretching it even further are the extra questions in the boxes around the edge.

Ratio with Bar Modelling

I currently run support classes for numeracy for years 4, 6, 8, 9 and 11.

Many of the students I see struggle to remember techniques, particularly when they are seemingly abstract.

Two main bits of inspiration brought me to re-teach ratio through bar modelling

(1) Concrete - Pictorial - Abstract
Research suggests students grasps concepts best if initially they can "play" with objects, then sketch it pictorially, before moving to the abstract technique.

(2) White Rose Maths Hub
With so many examples of bar modelling on their twitter feed @WRMathsHub, I visited their website and found a few bar modelling resources, here.

Ratio with Bar Modelling
Within the first 5 minutes the students appeared confident and comfortable with the new technique, and commented that it was much easier for them to understand what was going on.

Here is a little of their finished work:

These questions in their template can be found here.