Skip to main content

📝 Weekly Report #2

👨‍🏫 Teaching:

It's been great to be back teaching again this week and seeing my students again. I'm also super happy that the new initiatives we have implemented into our department are up and running and have already reduced my workload, so I am looking forward to hearing how the rest of the department have found it. I found a really useful resource by Nathan Day, @nathanday314, where he has put together the complete CIMT textbooks on to one pdf. I love CIMT resources and go to them regularly so this has been a big time saver. Check out his tweet here. 

🔊 Listen:

High performance podcast with Paul McGinley. Paul is a European tour golfer, where he has also captained team Europe. He speaks about empowering others to be the best they can be and helping them to express themselves. Its not about being best but making your team the best. Great one for middle leaders and developing your team's. Have a listen here.

📚 Read:

There's been lots of great blog posts about the start of the year and seeing routines etc but I wanted to highlight a Twitter thread by Sam Strickland. A real feel good thread where his school has had some really positive feedback from OFSTED. In the thread he talks about the changes he and his team have implemented to be successful. Check it out here. 

📺 Watch:

This week's video gives some advice on how to deal with challenging behaviour in the classroom. I had a tough time in my training and NQT year so here is some advice I would give to myself if I could go back in time. Dealing with Challenging Behaviour: Advice to my NQT self

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

📝 Weekly Report #33

This week I listened to a really good podcast episode from Greg McKeown called Where am I wrong? In it he talks about a really effective method to have deeper discussions on what is important.  Write down/say the 3-5 issues/priorities you think there are as well as the cost/consequence of them. Then just simply ask where am I wrong? It starts the conversation off with the other person talking and getting their points across. You can then get that shared understanding about what needs to be done and why.  It got me thinking about other areas this could be useful for e.g. dealing with conflicts, leading departments/teams, pitching a new initiative. I am going to start doing this in some of these scenarios as I think we can have more productive conversations from it.  Have a listen to the episode here .  🔊 Listen: Alan Stein Jr on the Modern Wisdom podcast discussing high performance and overcoming stress. He talks about thinking like an athlete with your work and impr...
Read more

England v Wales: Who teaches Maths better?

England V Wales: Who teaches Maths better? Times are changing in Wales, there is a new Curriculum focus and in Maths there are 5 proficiencies that the government want to see. Here's my take as a new HOD crossing the border from England. The Welsh government have overhauled the curriculum and not just in Maths. They have identified key statements of what matters and laid out principles for progressing in each subject.  Maths in every country is the same though surely.... Well yes... we still focus on Number, Algebra, Geometry and Statistics. But also no....in Wales it is mandatory to use their 5 proficiencies to progress students in Maths. This isn't an explicit thing in England. The 5 proficiencies are: conceptual understanding, fluency, logical thinking, strategic competence and communication with symbols Lots of big words. But if you dive deeper into the detail that the Welsh government provides on each of them it is no different to what the NCETM in England recommend with t...
Read more