Skip to main content

📝 Weekly Report #1

This is the start of a new weekly blog post I am putting together, reflecting on my own teaching and highlighting some of the great podcasts, books and blog posts I have learnt from during the week.

👨‍🏫 Teaching:

This is where I will reflect on the successes and challenges that I have had during the previous week. I will also look forward to the following week and identify a key focus for the week. Hopefully this will help other teachers in a similar scenario and give some guidance as to how I aim to continue to support student learning.

As I write this I am putting together a few resources ready for starting back up on Monday. We have 2 INSET days this year and then Wednesday with just the new year 7s, then back into teaching fully from Thursday. I'm hoping we can get back to normality and have a disruption free year from COVID. This year I also officially begin my new role as second in charge of Maths so I am sure to be reflecting on my challenges and successes I have this year. 

🔊 Listen:

Over the lockdowns I’ve listened to a wide range of podcasts both teaching and non teaching based that have really resonated with me so I am looking forward to distilling the learning that I have gained from them.

An episode I want to recommend for this week is from the Modern Wisdom podcast where Chris speaks to Cal Newport on how to master email overload. I know as teachers we can get sent a lot of rubbish so this may be useful to getting started on the right foot this year. Check it out here.

📚 Read:

This section is going to briefly reflect on the current book or blog post I am reading and any key learning I take from it. I do read some teaching books, however the majority of what I read isn’t from a teaching background and I enjoy trying to apply principles from other industries to the world of teaching.

This week I have been finishing up Sun Tzu's, Art of War. Obviously we aren't going to war with students however it does say "excellence lies in defeating the enemy without ever fighting". It makes me think about what I can do to avoid students misbehaving before they even get the chance, being proactive rather than reactive. For example having all my desks in rows and facing the front reduces the chance students have for turning and talking in class. It's a short read but very interesting, especially considering it was written a long time ago but the lessons are timeless. Get your copy here.

📺 Watch:

Every Tuesday at 5pm I am uploading a video to Youtube on my own teaching practice and what I am continuing to learn from others. Hopefully this positively impacts teaching on a wider scale and is easily digestible. Take a look at this week's video 5 Behaviour Management Tips for the Classroom

This is a new challenge for me using YouTube and blogging weekly so any tips or feedback would be appreciated. Looking to learn and grow every week. 

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Literacy in Maths

I'm a Maths teacher, I teach numbers. Why is Literacy so important for me? Well….here's why: "Literacy is fundamental for success in school and later life. Students who cannot read, write and communicate effectively are highly unlikely to access the challenging academic curriculum in secondary school and are more likely to have poor educational outcomes across all subjects." (Link 3)  Unfortunately there are a lot of Maths teachers who believe (wrongly) that literacy is a thing that the English department do. They see it as a tick box for observations. Rather than being an essential component of students being able to learn maths.  -  So what does it look like in Maths? Answer the question: Blindle 4x + 6 Are you able to do it?  This is the challenge a lot of students face in Mathematics. Subject specific vocabulary can seem really confusing to a lot of students. Understanding what a keyword is asking of students is often the hardest part of a question and can hold s...
Read more

Equivalent Fractions with Ratio Tables

The following is a slide taken from NCETM Checkpoints. I was happy with the fraction pair on the right but the left stumped me! Then I had that 'aha' moment!  What I used to do I never used to teach equivalent fractions like the one on the left to my classes. I would just use arrows to multiply both numerator and denominator to find an equivalent fraction, very similar to the fractions on the right.  The issue with this though is, like me, students don't necessarily see all of the multiplicative relationships between the fractions as well as within the fraction. They are missing that key knowledge to support them answering the first pair of fractions.   What I do now Ratio tables allow students to see those multiplicative links. By doing this it makes questions like the checkpoints task much easier for students to do.  Disclaimer: this isn't the only way I teach equivalent fractions. I also show students how prime factors can also help us. There will be a future...
Read more

Percentages with Ratio Tables

What if I said you could teach your students one thing and they could answer everything to do with Percentages? Don't believe me? Let me show you: Finding a percentage of an amount Q: Find 20% of 925 Increasing/Decreasing by a percentage Q: Decrease 45 by 16% Expressing as a percentage Q: A cereal bar weighs 24g. The cereal bar contains 3.6g of protein. Work out what percentage of the cereal bar is protein Percentage Change Q: Rebecca bought a dress for £80.  She later sold it for £116. Find the percentage profit. Reverse Percentages Q: A car increases in value by 35% to £2500. What was its original price? Ratio tables can be used for it all. There is obviously going to need to be some further teaching about what an increase/decrease is, how to work out the multiplier etc, but it is a great tool we should all be using more often You may have worked out by now that I like using Ratio tables. 
Read more