I often feel a little overwhelmed by the amount of technology leads I receive and consider.  To begin with I found it difficult to evaluate resources without trying them out with a class.  It’s often hard to imagine how a class will react to different methods – I guess the daily surprises are why I enjoy teaching quite so much.  Now I’m finding it easier to place tools appropriately but finding it harder to keep track of the good ones.  So I’ve gone back to basics and had another look at what I use every day – the Interactive Whiteboard.

I have a SMARTboard in the classroom, running with Notebook 10 and the full gallery of resources download.  All the latest software is available from the website including a free student download which enables pupils to open and amend Notebook files and access most of the tools.  Use of the interactive features of these boards is highly encouraged to engage pupils – I’m not bad at this but there is a lot more I’m sure I could be doing.  I worry too little about sticky fingerprints on the actual board.  Next year I want to see more.

OK – where do I start?

Last week I dug out an old email from a colleague in the Physics department – it was a link to  José Picardo‘s video:

Top five tips for creating resources for the interactive whiteboard

I watched it again, understanding more than last time and tried out some more of the ideas including the magic pen for magnifying and highlighting small chunks of work and the word reveal tricks.

It occurred to me that even the board can offer so much potential that I have not yet realised, without me learning new ICT skills or finding new software.  All this was going to take was a little effort.

Next port of call is the Gallery – it really is about time I found time to rake through all of the resources instead of just searching for something which suits a lesson plan.  It’s rather convenient then that I had an unexpected 4 hour train journey yesterday.  The train to Thurso thankfully has first class seats and no first class tickets which means that anyone can make use of the free plugs as long as you embark quick enough!

I’m pleased to report that I came across a lot of tools that I have used before but here are the ones that I promise to use this year.

Clocks – An assortment of clock face resources which can be used for show me activities, a teacher led lesson or as an interactive tool with pupils creating the questions.

Unit circles – Radians, degrees or both – you decide – precise accurate and much more visually stimulating than anything I could draw.

Dice – 10 sided dice that the pupils can roll and race.  Or dice that speak in foreign languages for a little cross curricular work – there’s even one where you can choose what goes on each side – or rather  the pupils can!

Symmetry – 2 Flash activities that pupils can use alone if you’ve got the ICT access or as a class – ready made reflection and rotation resources.  You can achieve this using the flip tools but this looks more professional.

Algebraic Fractions – A brief lesson, more suitable as a consolidation lesson than an introduction because the quiz is a stormer.

Quadratics and Straight Lines and Trig graphs – There are plenty of online resources and maths packages which will create these graphs and allow you to change the variables showing the transformation of the graphs but why look elsewhere when the gallery holds them anyway.  These simulations are clear and easy to manipulate.

Nets – A quick movie showing different 3D shapes being opened out and closed up – supplements physical practice without getting covered in prit stick at the front of the class.

Indices – the first tool I found allowed you to enter an integer value and a power – can be used to show square, cube numbers to lower ages/abilities and patterns involved with higher orders further up the school.  Followed by a smashing game of snap where you have to think quick to simplify indices and surds and spot the correct equality from a choice of changing cards.  Great starter for a higher set.

Interactive Ruler – and finally….you can move this ruler around the page just like the standard one but in addition you can set the arrows to do the measuring for you.  Pupils can read the scale then check their answers interactively.

So my pledge is to use these tools and I would urge you to give them a try too.  iwb-ideas

CfE Level C Term 1 Project

My own aim here is to identify a way to link our existing course outline to the new Curriculum for Excellence maths and numeracy outcomes.  (Of course, I have a professional duty now to conside the Health and Wellbeing and Literacy outcomes but I would like to master my own trade before adding the extras.  I will however aim to account for the general themes wherever I can in class.)

I’m not trying to be lazy and avoid the new ethos of CfE but I have to accept that my department have been very successful for a very long time.  Indeed I am a graduate of the Thurso High School maths department and no harm has come to me.  I even got a refund from the tax office last week!

Having only been a member of the team for 2 years I ask them all at once to forgive the liberal use of “we” and to accept this post for what it is – just my thoughts, a suggestion – that’s all.

We have tried various text book resources over the years trying to find a balance between challenge and practice, searching for meaningful courses that enable progression through, not only 5-14 levels, but through mathematical ability, building skills and gaining new knowledge.  Thankfully CfE offers the same flexibility in numeracy and mathematics.  Maths teachers can all recognise the need for competence in the current 5-14 curricular areas and therefore the theory behind the new outcomes – the wording may reflect a new era of empowerment to the pupils and a renewed effort to help the pupils to see the bigger picture and understand what they are trying to achieve but the skills and knowledge remain the domain of basic arithmetic, geometry, algebra and statistics.

The task remains then to change How we teach, not What we teach.

Plan a day trip.

As simple as that but let me try to go into detail.  My last blog on a Tinned Fruit theme outlined topics that could be included and other subjects that could be involved.  In this post I want to focus on a workable course plan for a specific class leading to assessments and, ultimately, reporting to parents and SMT in S1.

I’m only going to consider a single set class of pupils in the first draft.  They have come from primary having attained Level B – working towards Level C.  Please excuse my use of old 5-14 levels but they give me and, no doubt you, a benchmark to start from.

We currently have a comprehensive course outline to cover level C using MIA Book 1¹.  Term 1 includes chapters 1 to 5 and 18.  (Whole numbers, decimals, angles, letters and numbers and information handling.) with an assessment due early November.  This outline includes advice regarding the use of ICT and concrete resources to engage pupils and enhance learning.  It is far removed from a list of essential exercises to complete.  Complementing the course are homework exercises, problem solving resources and extension work.

The new ethos suggests that I should create a scheme relating more to real life scenarios and helping to facilitate the fostering of the 4 capacities.  To me this means that my lessons should be relevant, not specifically to life as youngsters know it now but to what it could be.  Taking their ideas and helping them to realise that one day they could make it happen.  So I need to find a topic they can engage with and help them to gain the necessary skills and knowledge to make it happen.

Ok – here goes!

Class Activity – Discuss what the class would like to do on a day trip.   (Take opportunity to introduce think pair share, listening and other group discussion skills and tools.)

Links to maths – tally, collect data.
Links to CfE capacities – effective contributors.

I rather like the idea of assessment being a sales pitch – pick my day out!  Pupils all complete individual cost analysis of a day trip of their choice and sell it to their peers.  I get the info I need about their understanding of the chapters/topics/outcomes covered through individual summative assessment and the pupils get to choose whose was the best offer/deal/presentation – everyone wins.

This is a theme will extend beyond S1 level C, I can already imagine how I could extend this to level D and beyond.

It doesn’t quite fit in exactly without making adjustments but I reckon I’m on the right track!

Your thoughts, always would only make this more useful.

I’ve just woken up on the couch.  It’s Sunday evening, my third year reports are due on Tuesday and I’ve been avoiding them all weekend.  This post is further procrastination but I’m sure that it will at least be useful in the long term.

Myself and some colleagues were in the school staffroom one lunchtime last week.  Our conversation wasn’t very big or clever, we were maturely discussing which fruit offered the best qualities by regarding how easy it was to select tasty fresh pieces in a supermarket and also it’s portability. For example – how do you choose a fresh pear and can you eat a kiwi without cutlery?

It’s a typically, trivial topic for our staffroom and although I have no evidence to support this, I suspect we’re not the only people who fall for the great cake/biscuit debate from time to time.

My tuppence worth was to suggest that tinned fruit was definitely the way to go – no surprises when you open the tin and it’s just as good for you as the real thing.  Our home economics teacher wasn’t so sure.  Surely all of the goodness is boiled away in pasteurisation?  Flash boiling kills the bugs that are alive before the canning process – can this also destroy the vitamins?  Vitamins are not alive, so can they be killed or eliminated in another way due to the process?  We, as a group of reasonably well educated people, concluded that we didn’t know whether tinned or fresh was actually better and left content.  (Although the home ec teacher did suggest that she wouldn’t rest until she actually knew.)

So why have I just woken up on the couch on a Sunday evening thinking about this?  It’s the potential Curriculum for Excellence learning opportunities that arise from this question that have just struck me like the proverbial bolt.

 Which is better – fresh fruit or canned?

Following Fearghal Kelly’s structure how could the initial discussion with a class work out?

How can we tell which is better?

·         Measure how much goodness is in fruit

Where can we find the information?

·         Online research

·         Science

How can we present our findings and extend our knowledge to different food?

·         Display work

·         Testing

Why do we can food anyway?

And we’re off…..

The pupils have chosen how they are going to answer the question, taking responsibility for their learning and the first steps to engaging in the task.

My bias is maths so here’s where I would go next.

With the raw data I now have several options for topics so I’m going down the road of a term long project to cover all of them. Unlike my last post where I suggested  only  vague ideas and the potential to learn a range of skills this time I’m thinking a little deeper and trying to fit them into learning outcomes.

The most obvious start point is statistics or information handling.  From a large list of data we can cover any of these outcomes to any different level from simple bar charts to standard deviation comparisons and beyond.

The next is percentages, what is the percentage difference between the fresh and canned information?   This can be extended to include fractions and probability, estimation and decimals, differentiated to the level of the class involved.

What about weight, measure and volume outcomes?   We will be dealing with everything from micrograms to kilograms, quantities that can be increased to suit the learning depending only on the information that we base the project on.  This too can be differentiated to incorporate basic number calculations or extended to include standard form notation and calculations.

Ratio and proportion, a notorious concept for pupils at a younger age can be introduced.

Problem solving.  Pupils throughout school age have difficulty explaining in words the meaning of their calculations.  A strong emphasis can be placed on evaluating and interpreting the numbers produced.

Will that keep us busy for a couple of months?  I do hope so. 

What about assessment – how do I know if the pupils have learned anything?  More importantly, how do the pupils know if they have learned?  It is hard to let go of complete control as a class teacher.  If I can’t have 3 standard block tests anymore I at least want to hold onto some justification and control.

Formative assessment would continue as normal in the classroom and I can easily test their skills with a summative assessment that can provide evidence of progress with a grade for the school, the parents, the pupils and me.  It may not be entirely in the spirit of Curriculum for Excellence but it will satisfy my need to know!

My own preference would be to provide the pupils with a smaller sample of information on another food and ask for a report.  I would differentiate the task by the degree of openness of the questions.

While we’re busy in the maths department what else can be done around the school?

History – the origins of canning food and other ways to preserve food – perhaps jam is as good as strawberries?

Science – hopefully some of the information can be discovered in the lab.  Are there experiments that can be completed to test the any vitamin levels?  How does pasteurisation work?  What does deteriorate the quality of vitamins and minerals?

Home economics – food nutrition and healthy living has a clear link.  Of course, there is the taste test too.

PE – the food nutrition link.

English/Literacy – report writing skills, factual text, making clear conclusions and

Art – creating display work or using fruit as a subject – perhaps a look at very under-ripe and over-ripe products?

Languages – I once saw a tin of tiny octopuses at a party in my student days and they eat a lot of tinned tongue on Ch4’s Shipwrecked.  Are these delicacies from particular countries – I wonder what else you could find on the local supermarket shelves in other countries and indeed what may not be available in other countries.

ICT – research, presentation.

How can the project be extended? 
It has been reported in the press recently that fruit is being picked far too early so that it can be packaged and dispatched around the world.  In doing this the fruit has no time to mature and develop the vitamins and merits for which it is known.

This could open an even bigger can of worms; modern studies – import/export, labour, fair trade; geography – environment, climate, carbon footprint; why not chuck in the global economy as a topical debate while we’re on the subject – or rather every subject.

I wish I could summon these ideas on demand, particularly in meetings where, as a department, we scratch our heads trying to find ways to incorporate the new ethos of Curriculum for Excellence without jeopardising the numeracy and mathematical skills of the next generation of pupils to trust us with their futures.  For now I’ll settle for the random moments of clarity and continue to write them down here.

My apologies for the ‘can of worms’ comment – although I’m sure if we looked hard enough……

I haven’t twittered much recently in the last week or so.  To be honest I have been lurking around but I’ve been suffering from a media induced confidence failure.  On Tuesday, BBC Breakfast suggested that people who tweet or communicate online are lacking a sense of  identity and have to justify their existence by staying in continual contact with people they know only electronically.  Their expert guest suggested that letting people know you are still alive was the real reason for persistently updating any social networking site and that this filled a personal companionship void.   The discussion continued with the old arguments that users were disconnected from reality and were promoting a short attention span in a new generation of young people.

My first reaction was outrage - how dare anyone suggest that I have no life away from my laptop.  I object to most of these points – I thought “I have a strong sense of self identity- I frequently assess my strengths and weaknesses and evaluate my teaching practice to make it better, I have strong opinions on many issues and know when to keep them to myself, I have strong morals which I can verbalise well even if I can’t stick to them – but it’s not my will power that’s in question here.” …

The possible exception to my indignation is that I do indeed have a short attention span but that has been the case since I was a child – long before the birth of twitter, but not long after the internet first reared it’s first URL.

As usual my emotions are working faster than my rationale can keep up.  Once I calmed down and began to consider these insults more clearly I realised that my initial reaction led me to question my own motivation for logging on.  

My network on Twitter doesn’t need to know how I scored at the golf on Saturday – only I care!  (And possibly my Dad who probably wishes I would improve before the mixed competitions this summer.)

But they might want to know that I had a successful lesson today because I used a fabulous online resource that I stumbled across last night.

This is because on Twitter I have built up not a group of random friends who play the same passive game or have reviewed the same movie as me but a Personal Learning Network.  This is much more than a random collection of people with a similar interest, it is a group of people that that I follow and talk with who offer me valuable opinions, pick me up when it’s not going well and give me a hearty pat on the back when something does.

Twitter is a place for me to share ideas, contribute to discussion, help like-minded colleagues and to learn.  Margaret Vass blogged recently to suggest that answers to questions came quicker from a PLN than from searching through hundreds of google search results and I agree, although I wouldn’t know who Mary was if we didn’t tweet.

This site, branded ‘social networking’ and therefore banned under most internet workplace policies, is a fantastic forum for discussion.  Nowhere else online can I get instant responses to issues and opinions.  If I throw an idea out to the Twitter world I get a wide reaching response almost guaranteed to expose the weaknesses of any argument.

On a daily basis I also get to hear about other’s successes and failures with techniques, technology and teaching.

I don’t have to wax lyrical here about why Twitter is so addictive and popular – if you’re not sure, just google it.  It has already found a place in education; Tom Barrett among many others has written about the positive contribution that Twitter can make to the classroom.  (Thanks to Twitter’s @valleyboyrich for giving me a link to the original page on Mark Warner’s Ideas to Inspire website.)  Commercially you can reach thousands of potential customers and hardly a week goes by without the Breakfast team passing comment.

So how do I feel about this 3 days on?  Well, like my blog, if people don’t want to hear what I have to say they can opt out but I do hope everyone in my current PLN can bear with me – I’m sure there are some pearls inside me somewhere just waiting to be farmed.  I will probably continue to express surplus information about my day to day life; sometime people find it interesting.  I will continue to articulate my opinions because every voice has a place in discussion.  I will stop worrying about what other people think!

“A common interest initially brought us together but it is a growing friendship that will keep us together.”  I wish this was a famous quote but it isn’t.

I do hope it stays true though.