So here it is, my diary of this apparently hellish year, all compacted into one place. Horrah!
The day begin with an effective icebreaker, which had some other underlying aims, a theme we were to see repeated throughout the day. The first idea I particularly liked, so will code this under my "novel mathematics" colouring:
Novel MathematicsA phrase to remember was:
Each student was given a post-it to put on their head. We were then to ask questions to other students to allow us to guess our post-it, e.g. am I a prime number, am I a function etc.
Work out what delayed you today, so you can ensure you arrive on time tomorrow.When students arrived late, the teacher asked others on their table to bring them up to speed. We are advised to consider management of resources to ensure they were used most effectively.
When asking questions, it became important to ask students who would have something to say, e.g. after group work. Avoid shaming pupils who aren't paying attention but instead use a phrase such as:
Matthew you've gone off somewhere, can you come back to us please.Shown that movement of pupils is not necessarily a bad thing but can be used to carry ideas around the room; avoid it seeming like a punishment.
The session culminated in discussing our observations from the previous week in our TLC group, notes of which can be found here:
20120918 Contrasting Techniques for Behaviour Management between Primary and Secondary Schools
The plenary was an exercise in class counting down in fractional increments - harder than it sounded!
