Mr Taylor's Toolbox Challenge

Last Easter my wife and I headed off on our honeymoon - we flew to New York, spent a few nights there, and cruised around the Caribbean before returning to less sunny shores and continuing with our more mundane existences.

We cruised with Royal Caribbean on their 'Anthem of the Seas' ship which was just lovely, but the reason I mention this is because I started making plans for a puzzle solving competition whilst we were on board.

Before we flew, my better half was on a cruising forum and booked a few excursions whilst we were in port and added us to a group taking on their 'Escape Room'. I took some students to one a few years back, and we had also done one after my brother bought us a gift voucher for Christmas.

Having made some plans, drawn some diagrams and got my hopes up, I came back and promptly did nothing about it.

More recently, I saw a tweet from an American teacher linking to this page, found some of the items on Amazon and eBay, a Stanley toolbox for £4 at Halfords and started to put some puzzles together.

My intention is to invite groups of four to do it at lunch time, with a leader board displayed prominently in my classroom window. I'm hoping to have 3 sets of the challenge for different half terms (maybe 2, 4 and 6) so that groups can have another go at a different challenge.

If you'd like me to share the resources, I am happy to (e-mail me, d.taylor3142[AT]gmail.com), but will not be adding them to my web site in case students happen upon my online space by accident. If you do, you'll need the following:

• a box (a toolbox) that can be locked using a combination lock, 
• a hasp, 
• a directional multilock, 
• an alphabet combination lock, 
• three 3-digit combination locks (although I hope to change these a little in future, and get a few different locks), 
• a key lock, 
• a UV torch,
• and a UV ink pen.

Robotics at School

A little time ago, I noticed a tweet from @MissBLilley about a STEM club and activities to run within it. A reply to this tweet (which I favourited to go back and take a spy at) directed me to the Tomorrow's Engineers EEP Robotics Challenge. I put an application in and whilst I was away on residential with next year's Young Leaders I received an e-mail offering us a place on next year's event. Huzzah!

The challenge is open to 11-14 year olds who will work in teams to work through 'space missions' involving teamwork, robots, designing, discovery and lots of Lego and fun! (Or so the web site says...)

My plan is to offer the event/challenge to our students in year 8 and year 9 from Week 2 in September and start to deliver 6 90-minute sessions to those interested. I have a few ideas to run alongside this, which are...

1. I attended a Leeds Festival of Science event called 'The Great Leeds Build Off' at The University of Leeds. As a part of this, students were in teams of 4 and assigned roles. One student could view a model and sketch it, a second could view the model to check their sketch, a third was to 'buy' the materials required to re-build the model themselves and the fourth was to build the model from their partners' specifications and materials. It was a fun hour-long activity that the kids bought into, but I wouldn't necessarily say it was worth travelling to the University for, and it would've been better as a roadshow event.
I intend to do something similar to have kids get to know one another across different year groups, with Lego that I used to have as a child.

2. I've bought a couple of robots! A Sphero 2.0 and a Sphero Ollie (A Darkside version, naturally) so that kids can have a bit of a play around with robots before working with them. Both can be controlled using a Bluetooth-enabled device, such as a phone or tablet, and my intention is to use them to race against each other (around a loop, timed, or around a course outside, racing), potentially battle against one another and bowling (I've already had 10 pins cut for this). The ICT department also have two Spheros, so we can have four teams racing/battling.

3. We have some BigTraks in the department. They work in the same way as the old computer programme 'Logo', and students will have a course to programme a route around, given an amount of time to plot their route and fire their rockets (we have rocket launcher attachments) at three targets. This should give students the chance to programme some robots before they get into the kit offered by Tomorrow's Engineers.

I'm thinking of having ten members in our team, but offering this to all and being selective once we've been through the opening bits. An ICT teacher at school has a plan to run a robotics club, and as a result the remainder can continue with him.
I have five of this year's outgoing Year 11 students coming back after college to gain work experience/help out and I'll assign these students as mentors to our team to help them work through the challenge. Two for each one will work out well!

As well as this, @MissBLilley and I have spoken about organising some 'fixtures' to compete against each other before we go to local competitions for a bit of a dry run! Very much looking forward to this!

Able, Gifted & Talented

It seems that every school lately is offering their staff the opportunity to 'intern' on their leadership team under the guise of an 'Associate Leader' post. I believe we currently have four Associate Leaders in place and my understanding of the application process is that each of these post-holders has submitted a proposal about what they'd like to lead on during their post. To my knowledge, our post-holders are currently leading on Teaching & Learning, Intervention, Student Leadership and Able, Gifted and Talented (which shall be referred to as AGT for the remainder of this post). I'm looking to focus on the AGT strand.

I am currently going in to my 7th year of teaching. I spent my first in a school that was closing, second in a school that had just opened and the previous four in a more established school. In terms of an AGT provision, I can't say I've seen a lot. I recall attending a maths event in my first year delivered by Rob Eastaway, for which we took the children identified as our 'most able' to another local secondary school and watched a lecture on the maths of games. In my second year I don't recall anyone mentioning AGT and this has been the case throughout most of my time in my current post. Myself and another member of the department took some Year 11s to a Maths Inspiration show, but was told in the next year that because it wouldn't have a direct effect in the class room that this wasn't going to be allowed again.

Late last year the Associate Leader for AGT asked us to identify our AGT pupils within mathematics and suggested that we 'highlight the pupils we expect to get an A in our subject'.

I looked at our AGT register recently, and I am shocked at the way that it has gone. My main shock was the dwindling numbers of pupils identified as we progressed through the school. I taught an excellent Year 7 top set this year and in my eyes at least half of them (class of 30, but two set ones in Y7) should be getting an A at GCSE. Only about 12 were identified in Year 8 top set and this number diminished as students got older. I believe that last year our 'A/A* haul' was 13 children. I am hoping that this is increased this year with a decent number from my set 2.

My hope is that if we focus on our top end more at KS3, they'll remain more engaged and develop the thinking skills to succeed at GCSE. Of course, in an ideal world, we'd do this with everyone, but time is a finite resource.

My intention is to run an 'AGT club' at a lunchtime:

Students will take part in the UKMT Mentoring Programme, working with a teacher in week 1, given the opportunity to 'drop in' in week 2 and to submit their solutions in week 3, starting the next set of problems in week 4 and repeating the cycle.
From this, we'll be able to identify a strong team for the UKMT Team Challenge event and entry to the Junior and Intermediate Individual Competitions.

As an aside from this, we'll be offering students the chance to experience a live escape game as a trip (which may take place in week 2 or 3) as these things are popping up all over the country it seems!
This will also be extended to our classes as a rewards trip after we've gone through our AGT cohort.

I'll also be looking into the Alan Turing Cryptography Competition and trying to find some information on the National Cipher Challenge, whilst also looking to get involved with the Science and Technology departments to work through some of the STEM Challenges here.

Academic Smackdown - A house event...

I sit here just over three weeks away from the end of an incredibly tough year. They're all tough, but this year has been extra busy. I achieved a promotion at the back end of last year, meaning that my responsibilities were increased, and on top of that out curriculum leader has been off for the last 12 weeks for medical reasons, meaning that I've had to step up to the assistant curriculum leader role whilst completing my own duties and teaching 20 lessons per week. I've been tired since October, and actually overslept by an hour this morning.

In a house meeting a number of months ago (probably prior to Christmas) the question was asked about potential house competitions and I suggested an academic competition - my heart bleeds for the quiet girl who gets zero attention for achieving a grade B at the end of year 9 whereas the boy who wins the 100m sprint at sports day and the misbehaving girl who has made improvements get all of it. This was my suggestion to allow those quiet (at times, silent at all others) intelligent kids to get some recognition and a loud round of applause. An 'Academic Smackdown', or 'Academic Heptathlon', but didn't want to limit the number of rounds.

I shelved the idea at the first. The response was too negative - "But it's too much work", "Someone will need to sort all of the questions out" - but I suggested the event to one of our house leaders who was incredibly supportive and we put the idea forward to the head. We looked at when to hold it, and decided that Year 11 out of the way and some time to breathe would be best and organised it for a day where disruption and the requirement for cover would be minimised. Wednesday, it seemed.

I left it for a while (first mistake) and got around to it after Easter. I sent an e-mail to curriculum leaders asking for subjects who would be interested in submitting a round for inclusion in the (now-dubbed) Academic Smackdown. Humanities (at years 7 and 8), ICT, Maths, Modern Foreign Languages, PE, RE and Science were the subjects to get back to me with a positive response and other teachers went to work on the questions. I wanted to give subjects ownership of their own round (second mistake).

The questions dripped in. Some as late as the week before the event. But they came in. It took a lot of work to put them in to a format I was happy with. I'm still not happy with it, but I now know it works and can work on something more long-term.

Whilst waiting for all of the questions to come in, I created an advert for the event, sharing it with form staff and asking them to show it to their forms, returning any interested students to me via e-mail (third mistake). The response was poor. I haven't given it a proper investigation, or asked questions about it, but the response from some forms was poor in terms of students (maybe their form teacher hadn't sold it so well) or non-existent (even a 'None from me. Sorry Mr. Taylor). I had to identify students from their KS2 data (English and Maths at level 5) and ask them. Many didn't show when I asked them to, so they missed out, but we just about managed to get 4 teams of 4 from years 7, 8 and 9. Unfortunately, year 10 became a write-off due to a lack of interest.

With teams sorted and questions compiled, the only issue was 'I've never run anything like this before. Will the number of questions be enough? Are they challenging, but not too challenging? What if...'. I compiled an 'In The News' round from a weekly news quiz on TES last night and went in feeling like this will go well.

We hired a set of buzzers from www.buzzgold.com, set up the hall with 2 hexagonal tables either side of a smaller table (the 4 large ones for the teams and the middle one for our presenter), split the seating up in to 'house sections' and put a microphone on all tables. I bought an inflatable trophy as a half-way house to something more professional-looking (silver plates, one for each year group, as it is).

I'd asked for the help of some of our Young Leaders to aid me on the day. 8 of our year 10s scored the event for us, acted as resource managers for each team and helped me to sort out the second event when it became apparent that a few changes were needed. They were outstanding and continue to be a credit to themselves and the school. I asked two year 8 children (who run the tech side of their own assemblies) to run the tech side of every event, and they were brilliant. Lastly, but by no means least, when the idea was first discussed as having potential, I thought of one child to present it. A year 10 girl, who is not at all our most perfect student, but has everything I wanted - a ruthless streak, the want to do better, a bit of banter and dedication to a cause. She was fantastic, and even muddled her way through pronouncing French and Spanish phrases with a bit of help.

I didn't get a promotion that I went for last year (assistant curriculum leader) due to having no experience in leading people. The last three months have changed that, with this event and stepping up within the department. That said, I didn't do this for experience or a promotion. I did this because I feel for those quiet kids who have so much to give to their school and get little opportunity to showcase their talents.

If you are looking to run a house event at your school, this is the one for you. If you've read this and have any questions, tweet me an e-mail address to @taylorda01 and we'll get a dialogue going. I'd suggest that you customise your event to your school, but I may share some resources if prodded.

Stretching the Top End

I work in an inner city school in Leeds. I have worked in the same post for 2 and a bit years now and I'm really enjoying working there. I have a good rapport with the vast (vast) majority of pupils and I'm getting more and more praise from senior members of staff. In the last two years our GCSE results in Maths have increased by about 20%... I'm not saying it's all me, but I'm saying that my input has a sizeable effect.

Myself and another colleague (who also joined at the same time from my previous school) take the D/E pupils from modular and we enter them for linear exams. We hammer them in class and organise extended revision sessions after school, into the evenings, at weekends and during holidays. Some of the pupils who attend these sessions are not the kind of kids you expect to turn up to do maths revision until 7pm (and then walk home in the rain, cold and pitch black of night - choosing to do it again two days later) and it's very humbling to have that kind of impact on some difficult pupils. I leave every session drained, but so full of optimism and positivity after spending 3 hours with kids who are working so hard and making it so apparent that I made the right career choice.

I love the effect that I have had on our results and our C/D and D/E borderline pupils, but I'd like to make more of an impact on stretching our top end. At the moment we have about 5-6% of our Year 11s achieving A/A* and this fact depresses me a little.

Tuesday was year 9 parents evening. I teach our top set and the talents that these pupils come in with impress me every day. I spent 4 hours without breaking from conversations informing parents of their kids' potential and having wonderfully positive conversations about their potential GCSE grades, rarely having a negative word to say. I told each parent (24 out of 29 possible attendees) that their kid has my attention between 3pm and 4pm for the next 2 and a half years - with two stipulations: (i) I receive 24 hours notice (mainly so that lifts are arranged and there's no confusion, but also because I may be busy with revision classes, needing to get home or year 11 football) and (ii) the pupil brings the work or finds it in the textbook (this isn't an extra lesson for me, but a chance to help out with pupils who are taking responsibility for their own work). (There is a third, which is just that they have the option to bring me sweets or a chocolate bar to say 'Thanks!'... I stressed the optional part, but did suggest that I would have a negative view of them for the rest of eternity if they didn't and wasn't sure if they'd be able to live with this!). At the time, one pupil booked Thursday to work on circles and a bit of standard form and brought a mate to do some area work from a lower set and in class three of the girls have asked if they can come on Thursdays to get some extra work done.

I'm planning to extend our foundation linear revision sessions to B to A and A to A* sessions taking place in evenings, at weekends and through holidays closer to exam time and I'm looking into offering the Free Standing Maths Qualification to selected students next year. We're taking some of our current year 11s to a maths inspiration workshop at West Yorkshire Playhouse in March and intending to book Rob Eastaway for a session and invite some of our local 'partnership' schools to get involved.

Further down the school, I'm assigning our Numeracy Leaders to year 8 pupils as mentors and they're also starting a Maths Computer Club for pupils to come and complete any MyMaths homework or play maths games every Thursday.

I'm so busy at the moment, but I'm loving every moment of it (until I teach year 7 or 8 and I start to get a bit disheartened with their approach to schooling). Because I'm doing all of this, Mr. Gove, do I get paid more from September? I only ask because, to be honest, I'd love some more money. Regardless of your (expectantly-absent) response, I'll do it anyway, because I want our kids to have all the opportunities they need to succeed at our school.

The Mathia

"The maths leader award is not concerned with the teaching of maths to the maths leaders. The course and award's aims are simply to teach young people how to lead others through basic maths activities and improving communication, organisation and motivational skills within the maths leaders."

Our intake is rough around the edges - even our best kids have something about them - but there are some real gems in there and I intend to sift through and find them. The sheer mention of university applications fills their eyes with hope, like they're unaware of their potential having never been told this. I can't help but recognise the positive aspects of being involved in this kind of exercise for life skills for our pupils and for their college and university applications.

I'm developing The Mathia!

The basics are this:
* the course takes approximately 30 hours to complete.
* pupils are required to be 13 years old or older.
* each pupil costs £5 to enter, with a minimum initial order of 25 learners.

The course is broken down into 6 units:
1. Planning, preparing and assisting a simple maths activity.
2. Communication and motivation skills for leading a maths activity.
3. Delivering maths across the curriculum.
4. Compendium of maths games and activities.
5. Organising and running a maths event/club.
6. Demonstration of leadership skills in maths.

We intend to run the course during a weekend away and during after school sessions in the first half term of this year for year 11 and later in the year for year 10.

Once the pupils complete the course, which I don't see as being a massive issue, they can have a massive impact on the progress of others and the presence of mathematics within the school. The areas that I have noted as potential uses are:

* One to one mentoring.
I've had a look at our tracking data for Year 7 over the past year and used a number of IF statements in Excel to identify some pupils who are seen as having a good attitude (two 1s and a 2 in our ATT column) but are two or more sub-levels below their target grade (if the difference between ACH and TGT at the end of the year is greater than 0.6). More than 15 children have been identified and I intend to assign each of the year 11 maths leaders to an incoming year 8 pupil. I expect them to meet at least once per week (before school, during registration, at break, at lunch or after school) and come back to me with this and hope that the year 8 pupils' confidence and, in turn, their grades improve.
Year 10, who will complete the course later in the year, will be assigned to current year 7 after Christmas, as this will allow these pupils to take their mentees/mentors through into next year and roll the programme out with Year 10s being taken on to work with Year 7.

* Involvement in 'Maths Day' activities.
I'm talking 'Pi Day' and 'World Maths Day' and things like this. WMD is on March 6, 2013 and a very basic plan is to commendere an ICT room (or 2... or 3...) where the Maths Leaders can lead year 7 and 8 classes in the WMD activities.

* Involvement in 'Year 5 Taster Day' sessions.
I posted a blog in July about the best end of term lesson ever. This is the activity we run with year 5 when they come in for a taster day and I'm sure that extra bodies involved would be a massive boost for the teacher who runs the session. By having a group of Maths Leaders (say, 8 of them) we can train them to work with any group. Let's say we have 8, numbered clockwise around the room in a horseshoe. When we start bringing the tetrahedrons together they can pair up (A = 1&2, B = 3&4, C = 5&6, D = 7&8). Once they're done, bring those groups together (A&B and C&D). I'm sure that this will lead to larger tetrahedrons being made and improved picture opportunities.

* Involved in delivering maths sessions at taster evenings.
If we have a number of kids who are mentors and a number of kids highlighted as mentees we can have the mentors available for questioning from parents and the mentees too. The mentees could work with the mentors to aid the incoming primary school pupils through puzzles and problems.

* Deliver after-school intervention/revision sessions.
Our KS3 classes follow a rather similar path throughout the year over 6 units. Our Maths Leaders can work in small groups to prepare and deliver revision sessions to the year 7s and 8s at different levels (123, 3 into 4, 4 into 5, 5 into 6 - rotating so that they work with all ability groups) prior to theit unit tests.



The biggest part of this that I'm excited about is the chance to turn our high achievers into even higher achievers.
And the badges... Oh the badges:

£20 for 100.


Any other suggestions for potential 'uses' of Maths Leaders would be absolutely outstanding.



Updated Sunday September 2, 19:27
 After I posted this on Twitter, it went a bit further than I expected it would. Thanks to everyone for their feedback and support. I've ordered 70 'The Mathia' badges and 30 badges for my form (They say 'I'm in 8DAT (It's OK to be jealous)' on them). I have a meeting on Thursday with the head of Literacy and Sports Leaders to discuss what we're going to do, so very excited and hoping to have them before then.

@janetgoodall suggested that 'The Mathia' could also be given the responsibility of updating a display board within the department or to deliver assemblies.
I'm thinking that a display board would be good, but I'm unsure over what they could really put on it. The assembly idea I like a lot and will be discussing with people over the next week.

The Extra Curricular

I recently wrote a blog post titled 'It's all about attitude, not ability...' It was a thought of mine regarding pupil ability against pupil attitude and suggesting that maybe some pupils will achieve higher than others whilst being considered 'less intelligent' than those they achieve higher than.

Everything that I am about to post, resources wise, is available at the Teaching AQA GCSE Maths blog. I just figured that it might be nice to have them put in one blog post, one after the other. They also have some activities on London 2012 coming up, too, I believe.

Back to my point: I want to create an extra curricular activity session so that my pupils who exhibit a good attitude and a willingness to succeed are given every chance in doing so and making as much progress this year as possible. I came across this six-episode activity on the blog mentioned previously and thought that it would be great for group work in such a session.

I intend to invite 20 kids back (10 year 7s, 6 year 8s and 4 year 9s) with (possibly) a few year 10s and 11s to lead. They will be put into 5 groups of 4 (with one year 10/11 pupil to organise) and be put through their paces in 'Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of the Devil's Eye'. Given my role as Sherlock Holmes in the staff pantomime, this fits in perfectly. There is a task guide available and each of the following worksheets are available to download from Scribd.

Introductory Session

00 Pilot

00 Map of London

00 Pilot Worksheet

Episode 1

01 Episode 1

01 Episode 1 Worksheet

01 Episode 1 Solution

Episode 2

02 Episode 2

02 Episode 2 Worksheet

02 Episode 2 Solution

Episode 3

03 Episode 3

03 Episode 3 Worksheet

03 Episode 3 Solution

Episode 4

04 Episode 4

04 Episode 4 Worksheet

04 Episode 4 Solution

Episode 5

05 Episode 5

05 Episode 5 Worksheet

05 Episode 5 Solution

Episode 6

06 Episode 6

06 Episode 6 Newspaper Cutting

06 Episode 6 Solution

06 Episode 6 Solution

It's all about attitude, not ability...

"Who in here considers themselves the average pupil?"

Hands go up.

"Good, consider yourself achieving your target grade or thereabouts come the end of the year"

"Who in here considers themselves below average?"

Hands go up.

"Anything you can do about that?"

Heads shake from side to side.

"That's definitely not the case, and will lead to you underachieving massively."

"Anyone consider themselves above average?"

Nothing.

"Well, that's depressing. Maybe some of you might think about how much more you can do, then..."

An actual conversation I had with year 8 set 3 this week. The same would go for 9 set 3, 10 set 5 and 11 set 5. I can pretty much say that those with the best attitudes will achieve above target and those who consider themselves below average without a chance will underachieve. Unfortunately, being a teacher at an inner city school, anything below set 2 throws up some very disengaged children.

There were 2 who said that they can't do anything about it, by the way, and those 2 didn't show up to parents' evening. It follows, to be fair. Staffroom discussion one night this week centred around kids' attitudes and the parents that bring them up. Overwhelmingly, the outcome was 'on the odd occasion, there are good parents with a kid who has gone off the rails, but typically, disinterested kids have rubbish parents'.

I teach 11 set 5. Half of them moved down a set throughout/after year 10 as members of sets 5 and 6 achieved higher than them. Their FFT grades are Cs (12), Ds (8) and Es (2). Currently, they have 13 Ds and 9 Es - 5 at their FFT and 1 above. I am hoping for 12 Cs by the end of the year, but can trust about 5 of them to get on in a lesson with any problems. Their resits come back on January 12 and I'm hoping for a much healthier picture than this, but not expecting miracles.

This horribly negative post is leading to 'What can I do to get these kids through to KS4 without falling behind?'.
A GTP student is currently taking my 7 set 1. To say that they are setted, their KS2 attainment is horribly wide ranging from 4.5 to 5.8, but they're a great set of kids to teach and mostly switched on during lessons.
I discussed with him the idea of a 'KS3+ after school class' with the intention being to invite kids with the best attitudes to stay behind and build on what they have already.
I'll get 6 tables together, to allow seating for 16 and invite 15 kids from my classes (5 from years 7, 8 and 9, a mixture of boys and girls). I'll get some drinks in and some snacks, and we can work through investigations and explore and discuss maths at around level 6/7.

After the first few weeks, I intend to start rolling it out to others in the classes who may be a little disengaged and lazy and by the end of the year I hope to have had every kid back at least once.

I'll be sure to update on here.