I have the pleasure of teaching two great Year 9 classes this year. One is a fabulous Maths group that I have taught for the past two years, another is an ICT taster class (we have brought taster options into Year 9 this year, allowing students to get a taster of KS4 courses – this…
Sometimes a couple of ideas come together to form a little flash of inspiration. I’ve had a Pinterest account for a while but not really used it personally or thought of using it in education. A blog post from Mark Warner got me thinking though. Pinterest is a social site that encourages users to create…
Edexcel admirably give you access to detailed question by question data from their Maths exams with the use of Results+. However I have always found that it does not come in a format that is particularly useful for teachers or individual pupils. I have created a spreadsheet that analyses the data at a class and individual…
Inspired by Sugata Mitra at the SSAT National Conference I decided to try and ape his ‘minimally invasive education‘ within my own Maths classroom. In a really tough December week this two hours shone out as a great teaching and learning experience. Before going any further, please head over to my previous post to read about the inspiration…
Scrolling through things I had starred for holiday reading, I noticed that Gapminder.org has been updated. I have blogged previously about Gapminder and the fantastic Hans Rosling, it is a fantastic tool for visualising a wealth of World data on lovely scatter graphs that animate changes through the years. Watch one of Hans Rosling’s classic TED talks to see…
I was surprised and honoured to receive an email on Friday inviting me to the House of Commons for the Progressive Education Network Spring Reception this Monday afternoon. I’m bitterly disappointed that the short notice means I will not be able to attend. 🙁 I came across the PEN via a tweet last month. Chaired by Mike…
Following yesterday’s use of Twitter in the classroom, I was walking to Period 5 (same class as yesterday) after lunch, when inspiration struck. I remembered this post from @tombarrett . Go and read it. Go on! I threw my lesson plan out of the window and did exactly what Tom did, here are the replies: (click through for…
I had an observation lesson today and decided to pull out all the technology tricks! We happened to be at a point in the scheme of work looking at data handling and collecting data in particular. I decided I’d develop the Questionnaires lesson which I used at interview last year. 60 minutes should be enough…
I attended a SSAT training day today about ensuring Maths progress for all. This included a 30 minute section about using IT within Maths. During this Paul Hynes from the SSAT demonstrated an augmented reality program that the Trust are currently working on. For those new to the term Augmented Reality it involves overlaying virtual…
I’m doing a quick presentation at Teach Meet North West tomorrow night in Manchester. If you haven’t been to a Teachmeet before it’s an ‘unconference’ where enthusaistic teachers get together to share ideas, usually with an E-Learning theme. I’m doing a 2 minute nano-presentation on Google Forms, based on my interview / blog post from…