Naughty Kids, Good Lessons, and Time

Monday week B is over. There are only 12 teaching days left of the term. And then I'll just have one term left of my NQT year. Where is the time going? In equal parts it seems to drag and rush by, and now it's my "half-birthday" and half of my time being 24 is up, and where has it gone?

My classes are ok for the most part. I taught some good lessons today, using this fun starter activity in all the maths ones. I'm more and more convinced that if the kids get into the starter, then the lesson is a good one. So now I will do my best to make the starters accessible and fun, as they should be.

C is back in my Y10 class after parents' evening last Thursday. He was good today, I think because at parents' evening I told most parents their kids were not going to get C grades at this rate, which shocked them a bit, good.

Crazy H pushed an LSA three times today, got kids to throw books at him, and also had a fight in his Art lesson. He's lost the plot, I don't know what to do with him. Similarly with another C, who was moved to my tutor group because his other tutor couldn't stand him, and now he is starting to go back to his old ways, including punching someone today, and also being accused of indecent behaviour. Our school is so up and down.

In other news, tonight is my chill night, and I should be marking, but due to the joys of Good Friday, I've been setting homework from today, so I only have one lot of books to mark, excellent! The rest of my week is pretty busy, as is my life generally, although recently I find myself bailing on things to spend more time with X. I think it's because I've started of thinking of time as my most limited resource so I may as well do what I most want to do with it. A good plan I think. We're going to Stonehenge this weekend, should be good fun. Have also booked my Spring holiday to Toronto, whoop whoop! Just gotta get through the 12 days first, I'm optimistic. And dramatic. In equal measures.

My horoscope:

Every Virgo respects the need to be painstaking when dealing with delicate situations, which is exactly what you’re facing now, and have been for weeks. Although it may not seem as if this process — which has been tedious and intriguing in equal parts — is coming to a close, it does, and suddenly. So say whatever you must and gather whatever facts you still need during the week’s first half. This frees you, so that when the focus shifts to practical matters, just before the week’s close, you’re ready. What’s more, this is so contentious that you’re relieved you familiarised yourself thoroughly with the minutiae involved. Better yet, in clearing up these problems, you’ll eliminate a few others as well.

A good day, even with drama

Today went well. Mostly. I had some lovely attendees at my maths support club, and all my lessons were good - I think I gave out about 20 merits in the day, that's loads. Y10 were really great, worked really hard etc. I think my day depends on Y10 and my tutor group - if they are both good, then the day is good.

Have two kids on blue report (danger of exclusion) and one girl currently excluded, plus some other TROUBLEMAKERS. Wish they could behave better. On the plus side, had a discussion with my Learning Log mentor, and he seems to think we're making good progress on the goals. This is despite the Head of Y12 having to postpone the Cambridge trip that I spent ages trying to organise. Grrr.

Only have one set of books left to mark this week, yay! Also, tomorrow is World Maths Day so I figure I will take my classes to the computer rooms so they can take part online. Obviously this is a recipe for disaster since the website will crash and the kids will riot. Oh well. I am happy right now.

One minor drama today though. Apparently I have had so much time off school that I am in danger of not passing my NQT year. That is awful bad news, equivalent to failing, I can't be doing that. Except I have already resigned my post, so it'll be tricky to have to extend my training to another term. Plus I don't want to have to come back in September, I already have a job lined up. I can't believe it really, I'm slightly shocked, since I was so highly rated last year, and now this year they think I'm going to fail. Crumbs. Better pull my socks up. I'm sure it'll be fine...

That's all for now. National Bed Month remember? Go to bed!

I wonder if any of this happened to you today?

I love not teaching in the afternoon, it's so the best thing!

My form were so good in silent reading this afternoon. Back last term this was completely impossible and wouldn't happen, but today we had the whole class super quiet, was awesome!

Except...

Three kids decided to draw pornographic images instead of reading! Shocker. These were seriously explicit pictures as well, I couldn't believe it. So trying to be smart, I confiscated the pics and told the kids I'd be sending copies to their parents. And I kept them back in detention after school. So far so good. But then I slipped out of the classroom for 2 minutes to photocopy some homework sheets for my Y10s, and when I came back, lo and behold the confiscated drawings had "disappeared". Little monsters. DId some futile ranting and raving, then had to send them home. Called up their parents - luckily they were good and supportive, so hopefully the culprit will step up tomorrow.

In other news, I'm teaching expanding brackets to my Y10 set 4, and my Y8 set 1. This meant that today I taught two hours worth of brackets, back to back lessons and everything. Aaaargh brackets, I don't want to see them again.
(((((((((((())))))))))))))))))))((((((((((((()))))))))))))))))))))

And finally, I was back at my old school today to watch the Y11 girls' borough basketball final. We have lost to the same school for the past 4 years, and this year we were so close to winning, and then lost by a point in the final minute. Such a dramatic game, and I felt really awful for the girls afterwards. Sport is too serious for me I think.

Back to the Learning Log. Yay, good times!

Drama Day

Taught three lessons today. Plenty of drama to go around.

Lesson 1: Year 7 (the x half of the year) were meant to complete their initial assessment test. First 15 minutes all good. Then one of the lads from my tutor group knocks on the door. "Miss, none of our class know where we're supposed to be for lesson 1". Oh dear. Leave my class for 5 minutes while I pop over to the main school. Lo and behold there are two Year 8 groups without teachers or classrooms milling about in the main corridor. Was surprised that things hadn't kicked off already; give them 5 more minutes and trouble would definitely start. One of the SLT is there trying to sort them out. She says she desperately needs the SLT chap in charge of timetabling. He's currently teaching in the room opposite where I am so I offer to briefly cover his room while he sorts out these kids. Obviously this takes up the whole lesson and he's not seen until break. Sooo, back in the maths block I am switching between my Year 7 maths test and the Year 7 science lesson next door. In the science lesson I have the kids drawing the equipment from their last lesson experiment and writing up methods. Have my eye on the other class too. Suddenly I hear a yell. Step back into my maths room and two boys are having a fight in the middle of the room. Excellent. Sort all that out and order them back in at lunch time for detention. When I return to the science class, one of the boys has managed to catch his trousers on a chair and is now causing a nice little scene. More fun.

Period 2 is spent sorting out the incident sheets for the fight and then trying to fix my tutor group documentation.

Period 3: Year 10. That kid, A, is back in my class. He saunters in late, uniform a mess, no stationery. Finally get him to open up his book. Lots of back chat so I ask him to leave the room to calm down. He comes back in and settles a bit, although he is still trying to push the boundaries. End of the lesson he thrusts his red report card in my face. "Sign it," he demands. How rude! I begin my lecture on politeness and how he is meant to put his report card on my desk at the start of the lesson. He starts kicking off, and then, the final straw. "You won't sign my report because I'm black and you don't like that". I am still so cross that he's said this that I have nothing more to say.

Period 4 was spent fuming and sorting out incident reports for him and another rather less naughty boy from that class.

Lunchtime: manage my detainees and plan for the afternoon, whilst trying to ignore day's drama so far. Also call the annoyed mother of a boy in my tutor group - he is studying Urdu when he asked to be in Spanish. Urdu?! Walk down the stairs and am about to leave the maths block. See a kid's head fly into the main door, and then two boys tearing pieces out of each other. Struggle to get the door open, but thankfully another teacher appears and yanks them apart.

Period 5: Year 9s after lunch woulda been trouble, but actually they were good as gold.

Tutor time: also manageable, despite issuing them with spelling lists! I vow to get my form under control. Have to keep one behind for constant talking.

And finally, just when I think I can get out of there, I check my pigeon hole. Three incident sheets for crazy H. I haven't seen him since morning registration, but clearly he has been causing trouble. Bunking lessons, calling teachers "pr*cks and bullsh*t, and my personal favourite....hiding in bushes and refusing to come out to go to lessons. We have no Head of Year at the moment so I have no clue what I'm supposed to do to sort him out.

It's a good thing I love drama.

My horoscope today:

The solar eclipse in Virgo suggests major life changes are imminent for many Virgos. You cannot remain the same and events from as long ago as 2003 are finally being sorted out. Don't try to tread the middle ground. The energy of these times says you have to come off the fence and make choices. So far this year you've been pulled from pillar to post, seemingly at the mercy of unpredictable changes. But you have a chance to break the mould, throw it away and begin again. It's time to take some small chances.

That all sounds fun doesn't it? My favourite bit is "the energy of these times". Right.

Thursday Ramble

Period 1: PSHE with my form. Have observed maybe three/four lessons of PSHE before. Have never studied it as a subject myself nor taught it. Helpfully, our learning manager (head of year) is off sick so I have no idea what we are meant to be studying today. Manage to kill an hour of time with the kids, luckily it was first thing in the morning...by afternoon they were distinctly more challenging.

Period 2: Year 9. Solving equations. I can't believe that there are 14 year olds that still struggle to solve 3x=18. Crazy D has moved down to set 5. I'm not sure whether to whoop; I have a strange concern for that boy. In his place I have Sulky L. You will know her from numerous temper tantrums last year. She sulked today. It was nice to have her back.

Period 3: Year 10. Setting the rules and expectations. I'm no longer stunned by the size of some of the boys. They can tower over me and I can happily rant away. Again, with this class I am shocked at the low ability. Bear in mind that I sat my maths GCSE in Year 10, whilst these kids are mostly level 4 (as a point of reference, most people at my secondary school achieved a level 5 in maths at 11). When we were playing a bit of warm-up maths bingo, some of the questions would frankly insult my Year 7 set from last year, but when I asked the kids if they were finding it a bit too easy, they all resoundingly said no. And they weren't lying. Going over the answers, only one child out of 26 could tell me the square root of 100, and that was after much prompting. A rather menacing child got himself kicked out within the first 2 minutes of the lesson by refusing to sit in his allocated seat. On the street he would have scared me, but in my classroom I have a comfortable feeling of control. Even when the principal tried to persuade me to take him back in, I declined, stating that such attitudes and lack of respect for learning did not belong in our room. I love being able to stick to my guns, not least because it stops the kids steam-rolling me (in theory anyway).

Period 4: Year 8. All the set lists have been lost so we each had to grab any old 20 kids and kill some time with them. Made up an anagram game, which the kids really got into. No maths to be seen :)

My tutor group made me cross in the afternoon. I wanted to set up some circle time stuff with them, but they were all rather restless so in the end I made them sit in silence. I feel guilty about that now a bit, since clearly all the frustrations of the day were unleashed on them. Hopefully they will learn not to chatter when it's lesson time, then I won't have to do that again. Shame we ended sourly since we had been getting on so well in the morning.

And the last thing on a busy school day - got cornered in the corridor by our principal about inspections. We're being OFSTEDed this term, crumbs. In preparation for this, we're having an inspection by our sponsors. And yes, you guessed it, I will be inspected. I completely freaked out with my subject mentor and department after being told. Inspection chills me, probably because it reminds me of the awful summer term. I hate freaking out in front of people, especially when they know me as calm and controlled, and when there's nothing too much to freak about, I'm sure it'll all be fine. Will have to do more to keep on top of things, can't be messing up so early in the term. I knew I'd be on the list, but I'm still not too psyched by it. I kinda feel that it's another hoop to jump through just because I've jumped well through the ones in the past. Similar I guess to the way that kids stop performing well at school, because they know that success will just lead to more work.

Finally may Rhys Jones rest in peace, along with all the many other young people for whom life was too short. I'm not in the mood to talk about guns and knives, except to say that today my Year 8s in maths were talking about the size of a bullet hole as if this was something cool to discover. Why?

What's one eight of 32?

Rather worrying article about maths education right here. Wonder how many of my students could answer the question, let alone their parents...?

SSE Day 4

Mulberry teaches maths in a very hand-ons/investigative type way. Lots of open activities, often involving some kinda colouring in/cutting out/pretty poster making. Not just scissors and glue though - the girls present the work they have done to the class and talk it through, tough stuff for some kids (especially those with EAL) so am impressed by that. And, importantly, all this investigative work leads to lots of lovely posters with which one can decorate the classroom. Kinda made me wish I had a fixed classroom next year so that I could set it up in group-work tables and have pretty displays too.

I watched the Y11 NRA day today (their final Y11 assembly and prize day). It was so beautiful, very emotional, even for me, a complete outsider. The head of Y11 is this super energetic middle-aged African woman, positively bouncing with barmy-ness, amazing! She wore a sari and the bit over her shoulder fell off during her speech and she just laughed it off. Also, upon opening her expensive-looking large ornamental bowl present, she immediately balanced it on her head and remarked "this is how we do it back home". Hahaha. The girls were really well behaved and all looked stunning in their traditional dress. A wonderful speech too from the head prefect. Yet more impressive stuff.

On the other end of the spectrum, I observed period 6 history with 9U. Made me very thankful that we only have one lesson after lunch. Period 6 seems to be a write-off. And these girls were actually pretty awful, well, by Mulberry standards anyway. Very rude and kept talking over the teacher and not doing the work and generally wasting their time. I could feel the rage bubbling in me and was very close to lecturing them all (despite their two other actual teachers being in the room...how could they let the girls behave like that?!). To calm myself I ran through bits of the lecture in my head (basically focusing on the fact that these girls are really privileged and lucky to have the educational opportunities they had, and that if they chose to waste them, well, they would have no-one else to blame when their poor kids ended up in a scummy school like mine). I then walked out.

Only one more day of this SSE, but don't worry, am already lining up a couple of days at my old primary school, yippee! Am helpfully in denial about the whole portfolio and all the tonnes of things I need to sort out to put in it. Also completely ignoring the dread I've got for school next week. Good times.

AS Sociology

The whole "will I, won't I" discussion over whether I'm actually teaching AS Sociology next year is still to be resolved. Timetabling seems to have become a complete nightmare for the SLT guy in charge - so much so that no-one really knows what they're definitively doing next year. This kinda makes it hard to plan, but we're plowing (ploughing?) on regardless.

With that in mind, I spent most of my morning with the Sociology Department at Mulberry. Very established department, again with a TFer as HoD. Why these TF kids are high achievers! Apparently the majority of new teachers don't want any management responsibilities, but it seems most TFers who are into their 3rd or 4th year of teaching have gone straight in there and grabbed themselves a post. Head of Maths for me? *shudder* I can't think of anything worse!

Anyway the department has achieved a GCSE pass rate of almost 80% A*-C for the last 4 years; this is huge when you think that our pass rate across the board is only 27%. Very dynamic, excellent resources and ideas, was very useful chattering with them. Plus plus plus they've given me tips on exam boards, old textbooks they don't need, ideas for teaching, and, very importantly, whole schemes of work for lots of units, excellent!

Anyway, it's that awkward transition time of year from LVIth to UVIth, but work is still going on. Watched a lesson on sociological theory where the kids were briefed on five main theories, put into groups, given a theory each, and then told to go away and research it and apply the theory to a topic from the list of "football, Christmas, fashion or chocolate", then make a poster and powerpoint presentation to teach the rest of the class. Interestingly the ppt had to be a max of 4 slides with 20 words in total, but with as many pictures as they wanted - something the girls were initially shocked by!

I only saw about 20 minutes of actual teaching time, but the girls in that group were excellent, really keen and got straight onto their independent work. Their teacher told me he makes them teach each other to help them get ideas clear in their head and become more creative with their work. This style of teaching I guess is similar to what I do in maths, but there's no way I could ever leave the kids to get on with their own work for a double session. Maybe I will have to learn to give the kids more responsibility; after all, they'll have to take control of their own work at uni.

Watched Sanju teach an excellent lesson with her Y7s. Was so impressed, in fact, that I think I'm going to do something similar for my external assessment in two weeks with my Y7s. Clearly she loves her maths and her teaching, which is half the battle won already. There was a real buzz of purposefulness in the room, with the girls working together on their questions and racing against time for the prize, exciting stuff! I won't tell you any more, I'll save it for two weeks. But despite all the bad press we get in staffrooms, I'm convinced that on the whole TF teachers really are motivated and enthusiastic and do make a difference in schools. Sure there are cynics to be found everywhere - it's just a case of proving them wrong (not as easy to do as it is to type!)

Had the afternoon off cos the staff were on INSET, bonus! Contemplated how I might basically just be teaching the wrong subject in the wrong school, but didn't really get anywhere with what to do about it. Now off to the gym. All in all a good day.

Good and funny things about school

Finally a good day :) Because:

1. I got enough sleep.
2. I finally got to teach actual "challenging" maths i.e. something above what I did in primary school. My subject mentor has lent me the top 7 kids in her top set Y9 for me to do A/A* material with, and it's great! Yippee! Also I am working with my HoDs top set Y10 group on Mayfield coursework, which is actually quite good fun when you don't have to spend 10 lessons going over what the mean, median, mode and range before you can even start.
3. Y7 parents' evening - this was very tiring but good to speak to parents and tell them how much their kids have achieved over the year. On a slight downer, lots of lovely troublemakers from the top set will be moved down into my group tomorrow, which will obviously cause some nice chaos, excellent.
4. Hitting the gym. Shoulda done this a long time ago. My general fear that I might actually whack a kid has pleasantly subsided (I am convinced I have that IED thing that the Swiss Re banker who whacked his daughter has, bless her soul. Although obviously not as intense as him).
5. My Professional Tutor is returning! Yay Babs! And apparently she sent my professional mentor in school an email full of criticism about my mentor's lack of work, excellent! Aaah, despite all her controversy, I am a big fan of Babs, can't wait to tell her all the drama.

So, to reward you all for putting up with my grumbling etc. here are some funnies my uncle sent me. Yes, they are to do with exams, but this is supposed to be an education blog. Supposedly.

A good thing and a bad thing

I am worried. Today one of my Y8s completely lost the plot and started ranting and shouting and crying at me. And I kept my cool and just soaked it all up. Strange.

Those of you who know me from back in the day will testify that I have a bit of a temper. Bit being a slight under-exaggeration. Perhaps the only girl to actually commit a violent act ever in the history of our wonderfully prim and proper independent school, I had a reputation as a bit of a hard nut. Unjustified really, I think I just lost control occassionally. But only cos I was immature and bit of an idiot.

But today, really, I remember feeling like I wanted to smack someone for only about a second, and then it all just flowed outta me and I was calm. I called the kid's mother and she was very supportive, and I think I will try and demand an apology from him on Thursday. But with regards to this little episode ruining my whole day, well, it didn't.

The reason I am worried is that I think I have become apathetic. The kid's behaviour should concern me I'm sure, I should be dwelling on it and thinking about how to fix the situation and how to avoid it happening in the future. But I don't really care.

Aaah it's a slippery slope, soon they'll all be walking all over me. Burn-out anyone? Hahaha, yes, paranoia too.

In other news, I think my Y7s are loving our current work multicultural maths. So far we've learnt to count, read, write and do sums in Chinese and Roman numerals, solved a number puzzle written in lots of different numbers scripts, learnt about time zones, and made Vedic square patterns. Still to come are lots of Vedic maths techniques using computers, rangoli patterns, islamic art, multiplication from around the world, and tangrams/egg-grams. I love teaching this way, it's so much more fun than textbook work and the kids are genuinely enthusiastic about it. Bless, maybe I care after all.

Funny maths things

Two funny things happened in school today. Well, lots of funny things, but two particularly funny things.

Firstly, period 2, support teaching Y10, a lesson on ratios. As a starter the teacher has pictures of giant apples and bananas on the board, and asks the class the ratio of apples to bananas. There are 6 apples and 2 bananas so some pupils correctly answer 6:2. The discussion moves on to simplifying ratios. In an attempt to help them understand, the teacher splits the fruit into two groups so that there are 3 apples and 1 banana in each group. However, the teacher does not really consider the layout of her new fruit groups. She stacks the 3 apples one on top of each other, and then puts the banana next to them. The banana is at an angle. Cue ridiculous guffawing from most of the class, and, I am ashamed to say, me too. The teacher isn't sure what is going on and so tells them to be quiet and then continues pointing at the giant ratio fruit, now resembling huge wide awake willies. Oh dear.

Secondly, I was marking Y7 practice papers for their exams next week. Yawn yawn, I hate exam papers, and can't believe I have to prep my Y7s for their end of year exams, how ridiculous, talk about narrowing the curriculum and teaching to the test. Anyway, question 10 is about sampling. Ali, Brian and Caro all ask people to taste two drinks and decide which they think is the supermarket cola and which is the more expensive cola. Ali surveys 20 people, Brian surveys 50 people, and Caro surveys 200 people. Part d is as follows, with sincere answer from one of my Y7s:

Ali, Brian and Caro all had different results. Whose result is likely to be the most reliable? Tick your answer.

Y7 ticks Ali.

Explain why you chose that answer.

because I wouldn't bother going round to ask 200 or 50 people about some coke! it would waste my energy. I think 20 people would save time.

Bear in mind we spent aaaages on surveys and sampling, and almost every other kid in the class got the question correct by choosing Caro and explaining that she surveyed the most people, and this kid's answer gets even more funny. Bless.

Here's an article on TF, perhaps with a vision some of us jaded TFers have forgotten....
And another one in the same issue of The Independent, which is all about TF but manages not to mention it by name at all, ingenious.

Behaviour Policy

Before I launch into a mini-rant about behaviour at my beloved Academy, some updates:

Hair: it's now been 25 days since I washed it with shampoo and I swear it's cleaning itself! I mean, I still thoroughly wash it with just water, but it's nowhere near as greasy as it was at the start. Plus, it feels thicker (although this could just be me following the spin). I do miss the smell of shampoo and given that I've been off serious sport for this whole time, it's not been properly tested yet. So far so good though.

Piano: I have now had 10 lessons and am thoroughly enjoying myself. I actually feel myself getting better every week and my musical theory is miiiiiiiiiles ahead of where it was (no idea how I got my grades before; perhaps evidence that "theory" incorporated into Guildhall exams can be bypassed). It's strange how I have completely forgotten how to read bass clef notes once I stopped playing 'cello and focused on trumpet. Also it's strange how I can now get my hands to do different things at the same time - not as hard as it looks! I have decided that it's definitely an advantage to try and learn something like piano at a young age since it is so mentally challenging (in a good way...as opposed to some of my little angels at school!) so if my future kiddies are up for it, I'll be smiling.

Anyway, onto the "drivel" as my blog has so offensively been described. My school is due to implement a brand new behaviour policy next term. The SLT attempted to give us some kinda input into what we were going to do at the start of the term, but we've not heard anything about it since. I'm guessing they will suddenly bombard us with new rules and guidelines and we'll be just as clueless as the kids.

Now, I'm all for a behaviour policy and will do my best to apply it as well as I can, but something like a behaviour policy requires every member of staff to follow through with it. Our school is so full of "old staff" who say they've seen these things fail time and time again that I don't think I'd be far off the mark if they didn't even try to implement it (or, fingers crossed they don't, but they could even sabotage it). This obviously won't be a good start, but a good start is crucial to the success of the policy.

Speaking of sabotage then, the whole SLT have been increasingly distinctly AWOL this half of term. Consequently behaviour has slipped dramatically to an almost unbearable level.

Take today, lesson 4, Y10 maths. Usually the maths department enjoys greater respect and better behaviour than most of the rest of the school; perhaps because most members of maths are "institutions" and the kids know not to mess. However, today, 10 minutes into the start of the lesson and there were at least 12 Y10s hanging around outside the block, and a further 5 who had already been kicked out of their lessons. Kids are just walking outta lessons and lounging around and refusing to go back. The group I team-teach were absolutely off the wall due to a cover teacher being present. Thankfully the Head of Department stepped in to give them a rollicking at the end of the session, but in other classes kids are getting away with it. Where's the SLT or Head of Year to come and sort them out? Nowhere to be seen. So the kids know they can get away with it and push it a little further each day.

I don't wanna be cynical or conspiracy theory about this, but I'm convinced the SLT are deliberately letting things slide with regards to behaviour so that next term when the new policies are introduced and behaviour improves, they can give all the credit to the marvellous new policy. In truth though, for the most part things will be better because they are finally doing their jobs again.

I guess I don't really care what eventually causes behaviour to improve as long as it does, but I can see things getting worse before they get better.

In other news, I'm singing in assembly on Friday - yes, dodgy I know, hahaha, but we'll see how we get on....

EAL

Subject Studies Days are becoming more and more useful as we finally get all this teaching jargon under our belts and begin to connect it all together.

Today we studied dyscalculia and EAL (English as an Additional Language - but really you should know that by now!) - specifically barriers to teaching and learning and strategies to overcome them.

Lots of wonderful discussion and sharing, but one of the most interesting things for me today was Sanju's 10 minute "lesson" to us in Bengali. Essentially she took basic arithmetic concepts and launched straight into a lesson on them entirely in a foreign language. She began by just reciting the numbers, then she wrote them on the board and kept asking us to do sums with them. Despite having a pretty thorough understanding of arithmetic (I know that 3+7=10!), I was pretty thrown by the new words, sounds, letters and questioning. Further, I found that I couldn't say that I was confused because I didn't have the words to do so.

During the lesson it was amazing to see the reaction of the class; a good proportion simply gave up on the lesson and completely switched off, whilst the ones that were trying to understand just giggled nervously and stared blankly when questions were asked to them. How many times have I seen this in my own classroom?

I honestly felt totally out of my depth but I did try to understand and even got some of the questions right, but maybe that was just fluke. That was only for 10 minutes though - imagine sitting through days and days of school having a bare minimum comprehension of what is going on...nightmare.

I have loads more respect and understanding for these kids now, particularly since our schools are tough places anyway without having to deal with a strange language and culture, along with all the emotional scars and baggage a lot of them come with.

They gave us lots of ideas to try and help them, but ultimately I feel it's just a case of time and exposure to the language. We were told that once the language kicks in, EAL kids often zoom ahead with their learning. In this sense being EAL isn't so much of a disadvantage since at least it can be "fixed". It's not a quick fix mind, but having heard stories of kids speaking no English at all in Y7 then getting an A* in maths five years later, there's hope there. Sadly there's nothing so simple for the life-long SEN kids; language isn't the only barrier for them.

Dyscalculia

Apparently only 1% of the world's population has heard of this condition, which is crazy given that 4 - 6% of people suffer from it. So, in an attempt to "spread the word" as the dyscalculiaforum urges us to do (thanks for that link elly, I'll be trying to get that video shown in our study day tomorrow) some info for you:

• the term refers to a wide range of life-long learning disabilities involving maths
• in very fancy word: sufferers experience dysfunction in the reception, comprehension, or production of quantitative and spatial information
• in quite fancy words: sufferers have trouble processing language, with visual-spatial relationships, with remembering facts, and with keeping a sequence of steps in order
• in basic terms: sufferers have difficulty learning the meaning of numbers or "number sense"; counting; understanding relationships between numbers; sorting objects; recognising patterns; understanding abstract concepts like time and direction/orientation; rules for games/strategy; comparing and contrasting; remembering and retaining basic maths facts; estimating; seeing links between concepts; applying their maths skills
• crucially, dyscalculics are usually of average or above average IQ and are often fine with written and oral language, but have specific problems with numbers (although there is a actually a significant proportion of dyscalculics who are also dyslexic).

I'm really glad that Canterbury and TF are putting an emphasis on this for us maths teachers; the more we know about these conditions, the better our teaching will be (at least in theory!)

When Babs came to observe me last half-term, she suspected that S in my Y8 group was dyslexic and maybe dyscalculic too. Having read through the symptoms, I'm inclined to agree with her. I've referred him to our SENCo so hopefully he'll be tested soon. In the meantime though, here are some strategies to help both dyscalculic and EAL pupils (for anyone writing their WA3!):

1. Varied learning/teaching styles - if the child doesn’t learn the way you teach, can you teach the way he learns?
2. One-on-one instruction
3. Memory recall games
4. Keywords - focus on understanding of words
5. Link work to real life examples/using tangible objects/simple games
6. Use of technology - pupils often find topics easier when they are delivered through maths software/websites
7. Increase confidence - help students become aware of their strengths and weaknesses
8. Don’t underestimate
9. Use of specialist staff (not just for teaching, but planning etc. also)
10. Build on prior knowledge
11. Opportunities to practice what has already been learnt - consolidation
12. Oral and written work
13. Understanding SEN and EAL needs are different (and different for each child too)
14. Address errors/misconceptions quickly before they become instilled e.g. through marking the first few questions to check for understanding
15. Writing frames and guidance on how to get answers down on paper
16. Model/demonstrate answers so pupils have something to work towards

Good-oh. So, to check your understanding of numbers and ability to estimate here are some numbers from my day. See if you can match the event with the number....

A) The percentage of the day I've spent in bed (I love Sundays)
B) The ratio of green olives stuffed with goat's cheese (delicious) to tictacs that I've eaten today
C) The number of pence I've topped up my Oyster card with (where does the money go?)
D) The number of calories I burnt off on the treadmill
E) The small fraction of lessons I have managed to plan for this week

1) 2/10
2) 50
3) 279
4) 7:9
5) 2000

Answers tomorrow.

And finally, I am loving both Plan B and Broke 'N' £nglish at the moment. These UK lyricists (and also some of the French ones, who I don't understand totally, but enough to get the gist!) are so heavy compared to the rubbish "gangsta" chat that comes outta the States. Gimme something to think about already.