Apologies for the um’s and ah’s, the blatant lie about when the end is near and the part where I begin to say something, stop and say the same thing again.  I fear that editing will detract me from the purpose of this post and hope that you can forgive my mistakes as, indeed, my pupils have to every day.

In case it doesn’t work – here’s the YouTube link.

Credits of a sort:

Royal Bank of Scotland – Facing Up To Finance;

I cannot find details of this package online any more. The link above is to their equally useful Moneysense site.

Bowland Maths;

Bowland provides project based maths lessons that can be used for introduction of new topics, consolidation of units or just as good old fun and problem solving.

AiFL – Black Box publications

These booklets have always been a great source of ideas about how to use formative assessment in the maths classroom – a great place to start, I often pick these up again to remind myself of new approaches.

HUGE THANK YOU’S to my whole PLN and particularly:

@mvass, @atstewart, @relativism, @jimhenderson, @daveterron, @islayian

for putting up with my endless pleas for advice and help.

The Longest Journey Starts With A Single Step

I am spending some time working my way through my rather neglected Google Reader feeds. Each and every one included has value in education and has been added by me because they have provided an insight or an idea that I have been grateful for.

Reading them is not a chore, fitting the time in has become a problem. But only because I spend too much of that trying to plan what to do with it!

So, first step to taking control of my time and information flow – Reader will be checked every morning. Instead of watching adverts and personal stories of variable quality on TV over breakfast I will open up Google and have a quick flick through what’s new.

Time found!

I’ve bust my shoulder falling on the ice so I’m home and attempting to amuse myself.  The tv’s on and my laptop is open.  Now that’s just any normal evening – the only reason I feel the need to justify it tonight is because it’s Friday and I feel that I ought to be out somewhere.  Who am I trying to kid?  I’ve got TMBett201o streaming live, courtesy of Twitcam and @eyebeams , Facebook is providing a constant stream of news concerning the weekend exploits of friends and family and Twitter is giving me live updates from the education world and beyond.  All of this from the comfort of my sofa with a cup of tea and a heat pack on my shoulder.  I’m as happy as I could be right now.

So what’s wrong?

Once again I am receiving more information than I can handle.  There are too many things to try and I want to do them all at once.  TeachMeet is adding  to this list, so as well as inspiring me with tales of excellent classroom practice and fabulous new learning and teaching tools, my mind is once again trying to find a space to store all of these ideas or more accurately – a way to fit them all in next week.  So to get started I went to the Glow login.  That’s when I realised that this post was necessary.

The trouble is I find it difficult to focus on one thing at a time.  My head is full of projects that I can’t start because I cannot choose which one to try.  I believe this is more about not wanting to put all the other ideas on hold rather than not being inspired enough by one.

This is really a reminder to myself that I need to set goals and targets at the beginning of each term.

Time to regroup and prioritise again.  I haven’t done this properly since I had to write personal profile statements for GTCS.  Tomorrow I am going to keep a log of all the ideas floating around, conceptions or projects already in progress.  Then on Sunday I will set my own targets for the rest of the term.  Hopefully if I can see in a straight line then my classes will benefit from a more consistent effort.

Will keep you posted.