I decided that a resource post was long overdue for the #summerblogchallenge, so I thought I'd post one of my favourite lessons. I put this together after discovering the fantastic Gapminder website a couple of years ago, and it's designed to provide a nice real-life link for exponential growth.
Looking back, looking forward...24/7/2015
It seems that we all do a bit of reflection at the end of the year. For me, my targets are a bit like New Year's resolutions - I start off well, but most things have fallen by the wayside by October half term. This year, I vowed to keep my room tidy and organise my equipment better... that didn't happen, and I must have bought about ten new boxes of pens from Tesco as pupils just wander out of the classroom with them. My first SBPC post was about just this - my What Went Wells and Even Better Ifs for this academic year.
As the staggered start to the summer holidays means that we all finish at different times (and yes, I am one of the lucky ones!), I'm reading a few great posts at the moment along just these lines. So today's post is a link to some of those. Quantity, not quality?23/7/2015 Today's post is a blog about blogging - does that make it a meta-blog?
I'll start with my fiance's reaction when I told him about the #summerblogchallenge - he was convinced that there was no way I could write 51 meaningful blog posts, and was in danger of just spamming my Twitter feed with rubbish - hence the title of this post. I think he's also concerned that I spent the first day of the summer holidays pre-writing posts and coming up with ideas rather than starting the big it's-the-summer-holidays spring clean of the tip we're currently living in. This got me thinking about what my aims are when I post, and why I do it. When I started blogging this year, I felt a little self-conscious. There are a lot of well-established teaching blogs already out there, and I couldn't see what I could contribute. However, I'm really glad I waded in, as it's really reinvigorated my teaching this year, along with loads of other advantages. So this post is for any on-the-fence would-be bloggers who are debating wading into the blogosphere. How does Bob Marley like his Maths...?22/7/2015 ...With jam in! Badumdum-tshh...
Not sure if that really works, but I enjoyed my first Maths Jam so much last night that I thought it would make a great topic for my SBPC post today. If you don't know about Maths Jam (I didn't until Beth (@MissBLilley) invited me along at the last maths conference), it's a monthly get-together for "maths enthusiasts" in your local area, which understandably attracts a lot of maths teachers. It's also something I wish I'd found out about a lot sooner, as I've been back in Leeds for over four years now, and would have really enjoyed going along to these as I was settling back in and making new friends. Warning: This post contains spoilers for a couple of problems from Solve my Maths. Planning for GCSE 201521/7/2015 Just a quick post today with a few useful goodies for the new Maths GCSE - these are all links I've found useful in planning and resourcing our schemes of work.
Bit of a random topic for my third SBPC, but bear with me. Over the weekend, my fiance dragged me to watch Jurassic World; I wasn't keen, as I missed the Jurassic Park hype when I was younger, and don't really enjoy action films. Since watching Jurassic World, we went back and watched three episodes of Planet Dinosaur - I'd never seen it before and found it fascinating, although the CGI looks a little dated now!
While we were watching it, we ended up discussing the huge time frames involved in the evolution of both dinosaurs and life in general. When I visualise dinosaurs, I imagine all the famous ones like Tyrannosaurus Rex, Stegasaurus and Diplodocus all roaming the planet at the same time. Something that struck me was the phenomenal length of time that dinosaurs in general were on the planet, and the (relative) shortness of the time that each recognisable species was around. I've spent a large chunk of my time over the last 18 months writing a scheme of work for Key Stage 3. I wrote a blog in June about our experiences of a year of mastery teaching and it's a theme I'll come back to in later posts over the summer, as the endless (M)astery debate is getting a lot of air time at the moment. As a side note, it's worth reading Charlie Stripp's blog posts and Andrew Blair's responses for views from both sides of the table.
I decided that today's post for the SBPC (Summer Blog Post Challenge - read here) should be about that journey, and the pitfalls I've met along the way. For a much more in-depth chronicle of writing a scheme, I suggest checking out Craig Barton's 19 part series - it takes a while to read, but has some great tips and ideas if you're in the same position I was a few months ago.
As I mentioned in my last blog post, I've had very little time lately to work on my website and write blog posts; it's a shame because I love doing both. Now that the seven-week summer holiday has arrived (I'm still not sure where that extra week has come from), and inspired by Dr Bennison's "blog post a day" personal challenge, I decided that I would join him and try and write one post each day until I return to school on 7th September.
I'm now slightly regretting signing myself up for this challenge. When I woke up this morning, I worked out that this means I need to write 51 blog posts before the start of September! Normally I have more ideas than time to write posts, but I sat here for about an hour earlier with serious writer's block.
Eventually, I decided that, as we've just finished the school year, it's a good time for both reflection and looking forward. I read a particularly great post along these lines today from Andy Tharby (@atharby), and I'm planning to write a similar one at some point, but I can't quite decide what my "three" are. For the time being, I thought I'd stick with a self-assessment format I'm happier with... |
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