Quote of the Week

'Miss, when my mum met you at parent's evening, she said you looked about 10. How old are you?'

Make it better

Thursday of this week, I had a dreadful day. The morning was packed with 12 year olds who'd fallen out with each other, and with maths, and at least 3 kids told me they 'couldn't be bothered' to think. It probably didn't help that my classroom was baking. At lunch a teacher I team-teach with told me she was ditching the class because she needed more planning time and had allocated me another teacher to team-teach with... 4 weeks before these students go on study leave. She said she was 'sure you'll agree it's what's best for the kids'! What? No! Add to that the looming prospect of a really long parents' evening that night, and I was not looking forward to period 5 with my naughtiest group.

My TA came up to my baking hot room and found me with my head in my hands, frustrated and tired and at the end of my tether. We had a chat, and I was reminded of something I've read a lot: I, as the teacher, set the weather in the classroom. Fair or stormy, I decide. I had 31 11 year olds about to turn up, who'd done nothing wrong, and I needed an attitude change before they came in! With my TA, I threw open all the windows on the shady side of the room and pulled down all the blinds on the sunny side (yeah, windows down both sides). Whilst we did this, we re-wrote the lesson plan verbally. Minimal silent individual work. We made some problem sets paired challenges, and others we decided to scrap and work wholly on the mini whiteboards for that section. We thought about questions to ask, and how to help them through the tougher bits.

We heard them yelling outside, so I plastered a big smile on my face and went out. The corridor was really hot, and I was happy that my room felt much cooler. It was dim too, which I thought would help calm them down. They lined up looking dishevelled and muddy after a lunchtime of football, but I got them in fast. I suggested they all take their jumpers off, and got right on with the lesson, using my favourite trick - saying it was a really hard lesson, but they'd done so well last lesson I thought they could handle it. My TA and I tag-teamed round the room, making eye contact and assessing which students needed us most, and where to position ourselves in the classroom for whole-class work. There were no tears. There was very little frustration. They took to the challenge, and the room felt full of positivity. No one whined at me, and no one was 'not bothered'. Everyone had some success. Random and my other 2 naughties stayed in the room the whole lesson, and did their work with minimal coaxing. When they filed out I turned to my TA and we both let out a long breath. 'Thank you' I said, 'That was a triumph'.

It's so easy to let my own frustrations spill over into my teaching, and it was so good to be reminded that I can change what feels inevitable, if I change my approach.

Head to Head

Yesterday, last lesson, I kept a Fiery Kid behind. He had failed to show up to a detention before we went on break (I hadn't even had him picked up - how was he supposed to remember?) and I had not only remembered this fact, but remembered it at the end of our lesson, which was the last lesson of the day. And I said he would have to stay for 10 minutes to do the homework he had failed to do in the first place (yes, we don't set much homework. School policy).

Fiery Kid told me he couldn't stay. I told him that school policy is that the day ends 15 minutes after the last lesson (even the school coaches don't go til then) so we can keep kids for that time. He began to get really angry, and I failed to take this seriously. He was playing to an audience, shouting 'Am I talking in another language or something? Everyone else gets it - I'm going! Why can't you understand? Are you stupid as well as ugly?' Then he said it was 'f***ing ridiculous', and on discovering that he could swear without the sky falling down, proceeded to run around the room swearing, before running out.

Today he was suspended internally all morning (sat in the back of my head of department's room) and was brought through at lunchtime to speak to me. He looked like a different kid. He mumbled at me, agreed promptly when my HoD told him he had been out of line, and did his homework with me before leaving. He didn't seem embarrassed, so much as crushed and worn out from arguing. We didn't have any real dialogue and, whilst I'm sure he'll behave himself tomorrow, it seems weirdly unsatisfactory.

We were discussing what students would ideally be like when they leave our school in inset tonight, and the verbs were strong: ambitious, confident, independent, daring. We don't seem to be encouraging these qualities in Fiery Kid. We seem to be crushing them. Could there be another option?

New Adventures

I got the news this week that I'll be teaching A Level maths next year (that's 16 - 18 year olds) as well as my usual 11-16 year olds. In a school like mine, with a big 11-16 group and a small sixth form, it's a pretty big deal - everyone wants to teach A Level! But I'm a bit terrified.

I keep on hearing that there's so much to get through in A level, and that you've got to just teach from the textbook to cover everything, so don't take risks and anyway they're too old to appreciate any fun stuff. This seems so untrue; I remember A level as being reasonably light on content, to be honest, and I don't see why a 17 year old wouldn't enjoy an open-ended, creative, problem solving style lesson as much as a 13 year old. Maybe it's just too hard to come up with lessons like that for that level of material? I don't know. I just know I've got a lot of reading and thinking to do before I'll accept that I've got to teach from the textbook all lesson, very lesson! Surely that's not what our brightest and best mathematicians should be experiencing?

Drama

Yesterday, I was informed that one of my tutor group had been suspended. Knowing the student involved, I was disappointed but not wholly surprised, until I head the reason. She had, quite seriously and with some forethought, tried to set fire to another student.

Never let it be said that truly terrible behaviour never happens in 'good schools'!

E.g.

At the maths workshop I went to recently, my head of department and I planned an activity around one idea: asking questions of the form 'give me an example of...' There are 3 main ways of using this, and I've been trying them a lot recently.

1. Ask students for an example of something, and keep adding criteria until there is one correct answer (attributed to lots of different people, as far as I can tell). Cute, but I don't like the idea of their first answers being 'wrong', so I want to be careful about how I phrase this. Also, it's less focussed on creativity.
For example: 'Give me an example of an even number.' 'Now see if you can find an example that's a multiple of 3' 'Now see if you can find an example that's a square number' etc. until everyone has, say, 36.

2. Make it really open ended: 'Give me an example of a hard question for this topic. Why is it hard? What would be an easy question?' I like this in really small groups or one-to-one, but in a class of 30+ I find it tricky to have everyone involved in the discussion.

3. Ask for an example of something, then compare. My favourite way of doing this involves everyone thinking of the first thing that comes into their heads. Get it down on paper, get it out of the way. Now the pressure's off, everyone's got someting, think of another example that you don't think anyone else will have got. I did this with 2 classes last week, asking each of them for a shape with an area of 5. After the initial shapes (rectangles, mostly, and a few right triangles), it got interesting. I asked them all to stand, then asked the people with rectangles to sit down. Then the people with triangles, then parallelograms, then trapeziums. Then we looked at what was left. The second time I did this, I talked more about the different categories as the students sat down, or rather, got them to talk about 'how to draw an x with area 5', which allowed them to share expertise and made those ideas seem more valued.

We extended this into another favourite tactic, question swapping, by asking each student to pick an integer between 6 and 20, then draw a shape with that area on a card. Then I paired them up and swapped them, and they had to find the area of the shape drawn on the card they were given, and check their answer with the person who drew it. Paired by ability, this meant I managed to challenge most of them. Incidentally, it also meant I won a bet with my head of department: I said that I was sure at least one of my top set would draw a circle. 'Surely not! What would you even write on it? The radius? Like....root of (5 over pi)?' In fact, I got a circle with a decimal radius, but said I wouldn't accept inaccurate answers, could they write it accurately please? Then they had it! Never underestimate.

The creativity in maths is so often lost, especially when the teacher does all the creative work! What would make a good question here? How did they get that answer? Handing the reins over for a bit was far less work for me in terms of preparation, though harder in terms of generating ideas and think-time. It got some kids involved who rarely volunteer answers in maths, either through anxiety about their ability or general shyness. It was so nice to see the kids who usually think their strengths lie in what they see as 'creative' subjects have a chance to shine in maths, and it gave the 'good-at-maths' rule followers pause for thought. I just wish more lessons could be more like this.

Flattering

'Miss, you're the most responsible adult we know, so will you come with us to a gig tomorrow? Under 16s have to be accompanied!'

Words

A student in my youngest group is really, really funny. We'll call her Bird Girl, because it reminds me of her name and demeanor. She likes to use the longest words she can to talk about things and, as we do a lot of talking, she gets to do this a lot. She also writes reams in her exercise book when given a task such as 'discuss and write down what you think we mean by a 'square root'. She covers her mini whiteboard whenever I ask a question. It's all very like me!

Also like me, Bird Girl writes as small as she possibly can. In tiny colourful handwriting she uses up every square of her exercise book, drawing lines with her ruler to separate the different pieces of work. She likes word problems and puzzles, and enjoys thinking for herself.

Does she sound bright to you? Does she sound engaged? I imagined from the first few weeks that she was near the top of the class (set 2), and the tests confirmed it, including the recent whole-year test that I neither set nor marked. She's clearly pretty able. However, when I told this to her parents at lats week's parent's evening, they were astonished. 'Bird Girl really struggles with maths. She was in the remedial group at primary school, and had extra help. She's never enjoyed it and is very anxious.' I looked at her (students come to our parents evenings) and asked if she felt that way. She said she used to hate maths, but she really liked it now, and also, it seemed a little easier. I don't know, but I suspect it's the general creativity and language-linked aspects that helped her. It seems sad she's never encountered these before!

P.s. A very big shout out to my most faithful reader, my sister, whose birthday it is today! Happy birthday sis!