Skip to main content

📝 Weekly Report #4

👨‍🏫 Teaching:

We had our schools open evening this week which was a fantastic opportunity to show off some of the great things we are doing in our department. Ended up speaking to lots of parents and potential future students until late in the evening. It's really noticeable how much of a difference a positive attitude towards maths from parents rubs off on their child. When parents are supportive and encourage their child to do well in maths, the child themselves is happy to have a go at activities and shows much more resilience when challenged. Hopefully this bodes well for next year's Year 7s and we have another fantastic cohort. 

🔊 Listen:

Have done a bit less listening this week as I have started riding my bike to work rather than driving so the podcast have taken a hit. However I have managed to re-listen to James Clears Atomic Habits on Audible. It's a great book with lots of takeaways. I regularly revisit this book and take something new away. This week's thought is about being aware of your current habits and the effect they have. Are they leading you on the path to where you want to be? Listen to the book on audible here.  

📚 Read:

Still working my way through Mastery by Robert Greene. Greene talks about 3 stages of your Apprenticeship to Mastery. The first stage he calls Deep Observation. During this phase it is important to observe and learn as much as possible from experts in the domain. Greene highlights the distinction between the surface knowledge that is often told to us and the deep knowledge that isn't said but is key to mastery. For example, when asking questions in a lesson it is important to allow time for students to think about the answer, often called wait time, this is the surface knowledge that is needed. The deeper knowledge is the body language, tone of voice, speed of speech etc that allows the teacher to develop this skill further. It is important that when mastering a skill we don't just focus on the surface but look deeper into why something works and how to do it. Get your copy of mastery here. 

📺 Watch:

Have decided to review some of the books I have read that have helped to influence some of the things that I do both in the classroom and in my daily life. The first book is Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein. Take a look at my thoughts using the link here.






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 st
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 improving every part of
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