Revision Tips and Techniques for Teachers and Coaches

8 May

joannemilesconsulting

It is the season for revision and wrapping up courses so with this in mind, I have pulled together a few ideas for this important stage of the year.

  1. Spin the bottle trouble-shooting

This is a group activity that surfaces aspects of the syllabus that learners find tricky and allows them to share questions and key learning points with each other.

  • Get learners into groups of four, ideally with a variety of skills and abilities in each group.
  • Give learners three post it notes each and ask them to write down on each post it either one topic that they found tricky on the course or one query they have about content within a topic. Give some preparation time, access to course files and textbooks and get them to work in pairs for support, if required.
  • Use an empty plastic bottle as a spinner. Each learner spins in turn and…

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Higher GCSE Starters

13 Aug

f(maths)

Last year I had a fairly standard approach to starters for my year 11 foundation class which I found to be successful (see here, the none of the above section), as a result I’m thinking about how to improve further on this.

The approach I used was to have an a5 sheet for the start of every lesson that had one question on each of the following:

  • One of the 4 operations with fractions
  • Linear equations
  • Expanding/factorising (single bracket)
  • BIDMAS
  • Listing square/cube/prime numbers
  • Negatives
  • Averages
  • Names of 2D and 3D shapes
  • Collecting like terms
  • Percentages of amounts

The actual topics did vary and it was really effective in stopping marks being dropped early in an exam. This also allowed me to proceed with more confidence in normal teaching that the simpler skills are there.

This year I have set 2 in year 11, all aiming for grade A (regardless…

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Dyscalculia – a very helpful overview

4 Aug

Thank you… Mr Williams

Mr Williams Maths

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6 easy ways to improve your questioning technique

10 Apr

marksmathsstuff

Well, 5 easy and 1 quite hard! Maybe something as simple as asking questions doesn’t sound like something worth working on – how many ways can there be to ask a question? How important can it be?

Well, there are lots of ways to ask a question and it can be really important! The way we ask questions is ingrained into us. Just try and work out how many questions you’ve asked in your career. How many per class? How many classes a week? 40+ weeks a year for how many years? There’s a good chance you’re into the hundreds of thousands! Of course it’s hard to change! It just feels wrong at first, and you’re going to get worse before you get better. But, as always – it’s worth doing if it improves learning in your classroom!

So here’s a few easy to implement ways of improving questioning (credit…

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Hello world!

27 Aug

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Happy blogging!