Sometimes a Method will Have to Do...?

You followed a cake recipe and made a wonderful dinner for present.

Did you understand how the yeast worked?

Did it matter?

Report Writing

Deadline looming for a set of sixth form reports, I had a look at other staff members to see the sorts of comments that they used - here's the bank for later referral!

Positive

• pleasure to teach
• mature work ethic
• listens carefully to explanations
• asks thoughtful clarifying questions
• participates actively in class discussion
• has found the work a real challenge, but has remained positive and sought help when needed
• promising start
• quiet, yet studious
• keen to do well
• to his/her credit

Areas for Improvement

• little chatty in class
• appears to have gaps in his/her knowledge
• just too few questions being done
• struggles to transfer knowledge to a new problem

Targets

• revisit this topic throughout the year to help secure understanding
• make sure doing work independently when asked
• hope they are up for the challenge
• visit help sessions
• practice is the key to doing well
• like to see a slightly more focussed approach
• get through enough questions to consolidate understanding fully

And as the author of Authentic Inquiry did (here), I've made a wordle...

Pleased to see "questions" and "help" rather large, but "test" is far too prominent for my liking. Something to think about for next time!

#10minwin - Challenge 100

I love 100 squares.

You can look for all sorts of patterns, impose different rules for creating numbers, look for relationships amongst rows and columns...

So I stuck a massive one up on the wall.

Each month I've given pupils a different challenge, so far being:
(i) make any number using four 4s
(ii) make any number using five 5s
(iii) give an expression for any number based on where you see n

I should now explain the second point...
I love post-it notes.

Within one week of working at my NQT school, my head of department arrived in my room with 4 packs of post-its and 2 packs of mini post-its. Word travels fast.

To start with, I offered no incentive or reward for this challenge, yet pupils took it upon themselves to sporadically ask for post-its to complete a number that they'd worked out during the lesson.

A distraction? Possibly. But I can't see self-motivation to work on a number challenge as a bad thing.