For all of those budding statisticians/soothsayers out there I have collated results from the AQA's testbase based upon my schools most recent mock exams. I have been trying to find the percentage of students who achieved each grade at each tier from summer 2016 to try to guestimate grade boundaries but to no avail. I hope that you find it useful and if any of you are able to do any further work with this then please get in touch and we can share findings. For info: The rankings are as close to multiples of 5 that I could get but are only out by at most 1.
0 Comments
I've been teaching mathematics for 16 years in a variety of schools across Yorkshire. After 10 years of experience as a 2nd in department I decided to bite the bullet and take on the challenge of becoming a Head of Department.
Some of the best lessons that I've seen have involved the teacher setting a scenario so that students can figure out, by themselves, strategies and key facts. Too often in the past I have just demonstrated methods & not surprisingly, within a few weeks, they have been forgotten. A number of years ago I began to investigate different ways of developing a deeper understanding in student's learning. Getting students to actively discuss ideas with each other can be very beneficial. Asking each other what they notice or why does that work, then presenting their findings to the rest of the class is a great way of developing mathematical vocabulary. (If they don't know a word then ask them to look it up in a dictionary). Ask them to note down 5 key facts on mini-white boards some of which can later be used for notes. I like the Think-Pair-Share approach - Think for 2 minutes, Pair discussion for 2 minutes then Share with the class. I've added a couple of ideas to the Resources section (pictures above). For weaker classes I usually have a set of questions that student's can ask each other but I hold off on giving them out until they have exhausted their own findings first. Hopefully I'll add a few more in the future. I've been teaching mathematics for 16 years in a variety of schools across Yorkshire. After 10 years of experience as a 2nd in department I decided to bite the bullet and take on the challenge of becoming a Head of Department.
For quite some time now I've been trawling various websites, Twitter and Pinterest to try to find something a little different that will engage, motivate and enthuse my students. At times this has seemed like an impossible task, more so on a Friday afternoon or first thing on a Monday morning when all the students want to talk about is their weekend antics. I remember back in the dark days when handing out a worksheet with 50 of the same questions was deemed good practice; this generated an endless amount of marking and drove some students into a pit of despair every time they had maths. So I've decided to put together a bunch of resources that I've found useful over the years, some of which are my own and some are not, and share them with you. I would really appreciate any feedback that you may have but please be gentle. This is my first ever blog and first ever attempt at web design! I hope that you find it useful and I will try my best to add to it frequently (time allowing and wife allowing!). |
Mr K McCausland
Maths teacher and HOD. Archives
January 2017
Categories
|