So much better....

Today I was out of school all day long at a session aimed at Gifted and Talented children run by a few people who run this perfectably acceptable website. Some parts of the day were great, they introduced a topic on sequences and mapping in a slow methodical manner which really teased out the 'correct' answer from some students who weren't allowed to reveal the rule. They used different, more difficult numbers before encouraging students to write the rule algebraically themselves. I was really geared up for a great day.

This was followed by an hour long lecture where our year 8 children sat and listened to them.

WHAT???

Then they had 90 minutes to do an open ended investigation. Most of them did it for about 45 minutes with little help and weren't sure what to do next, as they were given no instructions they sat and talked to each other. Who could blame them.

Then an interesting part of the day, an hour long conversation about listing questions the students wanted to answer about straight line graphs. I thought this was great, really solid important pedagogy which made link between what they were doing and how 'real' mathematicians operate.

Again....another 90 minute investigation which they could get stuck into for 45 mins.

No real conclusion, no bringing together of results. I doubt there is one child who could say what they learnt today. That would have got a 3 in an ofsted observation.

I should have loved the session today, I think investigations and projects are great. I love giving students the opportunity to investigate their own questions. I also really like straight line graphs. I'm really good at them. what a wasted opportunity though. You can't just leave children with a bunch of questions and expect them to get on with it and find something very meaningful because they might only find something half meaningful. I'm sure our students have half an idea that one of the numbers has something to do with where the lines crosses one of the axis. I doubt they could be really specific about which number did what and why.

Why not formalise what was learnt, why not be a little prescriptive and tell them something after they've some so close to learn something for themselves. I think most of our children left feeling like they were bad at maths because they couldn't put the final piece of the puzzle together.

If the last piece doesn't quite fit, maybe it's better to hammer it in.

I'm so good at teaching.

I gave up a whole lesson to merely writing today. My years 8s bottomish set had just finished a statistical investigation into a football match, had made posters and written and report about the game in addition to collecting and recording the data themselves.

Well today, after a good competitive starter about writing out their 3.5 times tables ('just think of it as repeated addition was a controversial thing I told them) we had a class conversation about what went wrong, what went right and how we would change the investigation if we had to it all over again. After than they wrote up their thoughts in silence. I thought it was a great exercise for them, it was evaluative, not really teacher led, it asked for higher order thinking skills, they had to justify their decisions and explain why they thought what they did. If was meaningful self assessment. As I pointed out to them these were skills which could be used in any classroom, and more importantly, in any situation after.

It was a great way to end off a project and, amazingly, there wasn't one person who muttered 'why are we doing this...this is English'. They were making links between topics and understood why we were doing the task.

Great lesson.

This Week

In addition to normal lessons:

Monday: After school classes until, free periods and lunch taken up with a journalism project, got home planning until after dinner then played football.
Tuesday: After school meetings followed by going boxing gym (I need some tips to keep the year 9s in line)
Wednesday: Enrichment project at a local university getting home late, piano lesson (grade 3 since you ask-until 8.00)
Thursday-Astronomy club after school, meeting with a parent followed with writing year 8 reports
Friday-Decorated my classroom with new posters to make it look decent. Really battered the whiteboard speakers with a John Digweed mix. Member of SLT looked perplexed by noise.
Saturday-Got up at 7.45 to watch my year group play football, went to the Institute of Education library to swot up in preperation for my masters
Sunday-Got up at 7.30 to mark year 11 books, went boxing again. Now to plan my A-level class.

Same again next week.

Aren't I a whiny little martyr.

Must write about maths-it's why I set this blog up.

What I really love...

Bonkers is one of my favourite students in my form. Not at all clever, daft as a brush but also quite endearing and not at all malicious.

This week he strode into the classroom beaming from ear to ear opened the bin and swished the liner round with his hand.

"YESSSSS....That's brilliant'

Totally perplexed at this not untypical behaviour I asked him what he was so happy about.

'I love bin liners sir. I just love the feel of them. When I'm at home alone I get one of them out and just play with it when its empty. This one time I filled one up with vegetable oil and it went all squishy which was great. Then I got a hole it it and it whooshed out [he was miming all of this as well] all over the kitchen"

'What did your mum say"

'She beat me sir"

I can't really blame her.

'Sir.....I'm sorry but this is Bullshit'

Normally that remark would warrant a telling off or even a detention depending on the situation but the apologetic and weary way it was said elicited a laugh from me.

'What do you mean?' I asked Suspicious (who is on the borderline of failing his GCSE).

'Well I just don't see the point of this....'

One and a half lessons of changing the subject on a formula in and he didn't see the point, I sighed. 'Well if we start with this formula, it tells us the cost of hiring a car, however if we.......'

'No, I get that, it's just rubbish though, I want to pass my exam.

'erm....yes. this is going be on it'. All I'm doing is exam style questions (All I ever do with that class in that year is exam style questions-frankly it's all I'm allowed to do. Three X teaching-example, explanation, exercises. But what a good explanation and method I teach)

'But I want to pass with a C'

'erm....yes. What's wrong' as I pointed to the grade B on the board'

'But we're just reversing, that's not difficult'

'Inversing Suspicious, but no. It's not. Look....that's a grade B level work'

'Are you sure, it doesn't seem so'

Amazing and horrible. Here's a boy who's on the point of failing and is able to rearrange a=(b+c^2)/4 to make c the subject.

That's practically an A grade questions. Clearly I'm the best teacher in the whole of East London.

Here's a boy who can do an A grade question really easily and doesn't believe that it's difficult. Clearly there's something wrong with the test.

Probably (hopefully) a bit of both.

Decisions, decisions

Well it appears that choice in school is the issue of the day. I can't really remember if it was an issue when it was decided what secondary school I would be going for. My parents had rejected sending me to a public schools nor were there any Grammer schools in the local area. The local comp it was then. It was a decent one with nice facilities and decent teaching.

There's a feeling in the country, at least one you can pick up if were to happen to read The Guardian, that choice in public services is a bad thing for some reason. I think the tacit admission that public services are different for different people sits uncomfortably with some people and I'm not entirely sure why, if you have an organisation of 300 people it's unreasonable to assume it's going to have its own culture and its own identity and what's more reasonable than for a parent to what culture and identity its own child should grow up in.

I think it's reasonably healthy in all walks of life that people are able to consume differnet product s and thus make a decision about what's good or bad. I'm sure there was time when being discriminating was to show good judgement. It's good to discriminate of certain grounds-people will reject what they don't want and there will be more of what people want.

People want good schools. they want poor schools to be shut down, they want rubbish teachers to be fired and children to spend time in a productive, challenging and improving place.

The idea that some children will flourish in a poor school is probably true, some will, most won't. Children, like adults want to fit in to a culture and are easily impressed with poor behaviour and morals. If they are in a culture of poor behaviour only the very best will ignore it however most will just go with the flow begin to copy. What wrong with talking while the teacher does if everyone else does it, does it really matter if I don't do my homework, nobody will really notice what's really wrong with telling the teacher to 'fuck off'? Particularly if they know a teacher is so busy or incompetent they won't say or do anything in return.

So let schools close, it's a good thing, lest people decide what's best for thier own children, and lets not condemn parents for making these choices.

Now we wait....

Preparation done, 5 hours of constant teaching to some with an extra two hours after school for others. Most have really worked hard, others didn't, and if they won't work the day before an exam they never will, not today nor at any job in the future.

Thousands spent of resources, website passwords have been provided, twelve years of education have been building up for tomorrow, for some it will be the fourth attempt to pass this GCSE module, for others just the second.

Far too tired to write a lot today, not just for the day at work but also as I played football after-I scored the winner. Hooray for me.

Good luck boys and girls.

*I'll write about this at length tomorrow I think. I don't agree with a word.