Day 323: Under Prepared? Over Prepared?

I can’t tell you the answer to that question at this moment in time. I feel… prepared.

I am being observed teaching tomorrow. It is a maths lesson. Now, in theory, this shouldn’t be something that I should have a problem with. I have a great working relationship with my observer, I know what I am teaching well, I have plenty of slides prepared… except I don’t have a working projector (still) and there are a couple of elements of the lesson that are a little risky.

However, you have to take risks. Those elements are ones that I can’t predict at the moment. One part relies on the individual whims of 20 children, for example, and I can’t work out the potential permutations for that. (OK, there are over 4000 different ways that my pupils can make choices tomorrow. 4845 to be exact…)

It’s the ultimate in winging it, albeit in a fairly controlled way.

Today continued laying groundwork for this lesson. More work on fractions and exploring models using Lego. I think I am having an impact here now. I would ordinarily be using a flashy interactive fraction wall to demonstrate the ideas and links between groups of fractions. That is just not an option though, so other ways are being invented and refined as the week goes on.

The relationship between fractions and food are age old now and no longer wowsy. There is the standard lesson about fractions of different coloured Smarties in tubes, lessons where pizzas and cakes are cut up. They have seen that. My lesson is taking those ideas and applying them to numbers, trying to provide a visual model to but out and keep to apply to a range of situations. The ideas mentioned above are very limiting – that’s not to say there aren’t limits in Lego (making 10 or 5 for instance isn’t straightforward), but there are more options available. I’m not alone in working towards this (see the links below) and I bet this idea could become well used in schools in the future.

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