Category Archives: From Around The Web

Robert Low: Why is subtraction so hard?

Really interesting article and worth a read Subtraction presents various problems to learners of mathematics, not least with the mechanics of hand calculating the result of subtracting one multi-digit number from another. But that’s not the kind of difficulty I’m interested in: I’m more interested here in the difficulties that arise when computations involving several… Read More »

A little every day

Lack of updates. Sorry. Crunch time (plus exciting personal stuff). I will get on doing some things in a few weeks. PowerPoints to be done. More variation stuff to work on. More timed questions to set up. In the meantime: These are GREAT. I teach a lower attainment year 11 and they often struggle to… Read More »

SSDD Problems

I’ve been using Mr Barton’s SSDD Problems with my year 11 class. I think they’re really good. They do a really good job of making students pick out what they need to do. Here’s a great one. This is great because it makes pupils read the question. It was fantastic for revision because we got… Read More »

Ben Newmark: Why I killed my starters

So welcome to my lesson. Pens out. One to fifteen in your margins. Nothing new, it’s a review. Question one.. https://bennewmark.wordpress.com/2017/11/13/nothing-new-its-a-review-on-why-i-killed-my-starters/ This is lovely post. A thought: Maybe ‘fun’ starters were implemented partly as a behaviour tool. Might also explain the persistence of ‘high pace’ lessons with lots of superficial tasks. Keeps pupils busy, even… Read More »

Bad graphs

I collect misleading graphs. Here’s an excellent one I saw today. What’s wrong with it? There’s more than the obvious. How would you regraph it? Here’s some other weird ones. Although maybe it’s wrong to call these graphs These are ‘infographics’ not graphs. Heathenous maths person… 😉 — TheProvokedPedagogue (@Provokedpedagog) October 9, 2017

Why SLANT? — …to the real.

At a past Michaela debate I heard Peter Hyman describe a desire for education ‘…with a smile, not a SLANT.’ The implication was not only, bizarrely, that the two are mutually exclusive (Bright Face is another technique taken from Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion) but that ‘SLANT’ is somehow not desirable. The acronym stands for… Read More »