"If you can get to school for 7:45am (we're aware of a large proportion of our students travelling across Leeds or acting as carers to siblings in a morning), a minimum of two members of staff will be available for half an hour every morning to make a difference to your GCSE maths grade."
Unfortunately, nine didn't take us up on the offer at all and three students only attended one day out of the four weeks. Fortunately, word spread and a good number of students asked if they could join us and we ended up with about 10 students every morning for 3-4 weeks.
As part of the provision, we offered breakfast. Toast, specifically. Plate-loads of it - that the students never bothered with, so I ate a lot and so did my year 8 form!
It was really easy to run. We subscribe to Mathsbox.org.uk, so printed a booklet of their Skills Check worksheets. 2 pages from each of sets 1 to 6 at three different levels to suit the needs of the students that we'd invited.
Students came in, were handed theirs and worked through it - asking for help where they needed it and were directed to the same problem on the next sheet to check that they'd taken in what had just been said.
The question is... did it work?
Was it worth rushing in and being there from 7:30 because one student couldn't wait for 7:45?!
I'd like to think so.
Our data suggests so. The average progress made by all students in our Year 11 cohort last year between their second mock exam and their GCSE exam was 0.2 grades. Using the 11 students who achieved for at least a full week, the average progress in the same amount of time 0.4.
Will we be doing this again this year? Absolutely.
We're running it two mornings per week from the first week back after half term - 30 students have been invited with students already asking why they haven't been invited ("It's not that you're not welcome, you definitely are, but we haven't identified a need to tell you that you need to be there.")
I'm hoping two mornings per week is more sustainable over a longer period of time to maintain engagement and progress. It also gives me the opportunity to identify different needs throughout the year.
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