Pi Day tomorrow

March 14th. Or as they write in America, 3/14, hence Pi Day. Going to do a few activities with my classes and try to incorporate the Activexpression handsets too.

Here's the rough outline of what I hope to do:

Entry to some Music of Pi, possibly this one. Each note represents one of the digits 0-9, and the resulting music is played. This particular musician has created a whole symphony, by playing different instruments and putting it all together.

Pi dingbats. No, I wasn't sure what a dingbat was either, but think the old TV show, Catchphrase. "Say what you see." Here's an example:

Pupils can send their answers to the board via the handsets. It won't be a right or wrong type answer, but hopefully will be fun.

Then we're going to write the numbers of pie on to paper plates, starting at the centre and working our way out. The result should be a little like this:

Finally, a multiple choice quiz on various pi related topics. Again, just a bit of fun, but this time, using the Activexpression handsets, we can track right answers.






Throughout the lesson, I'll have some posters up, maybe play some silly songs about pi, even encourage pupils to learn as many digits of pi as possible! Here's a favourite song I usually play when teaching circles:

I'm also having two different visitors to my lessons tomorrow. One to shadow a pupil. to look at his interactions during various subjects, the other is an English PGCE student who is interested in the use of ICT in the classroom.

I'll update on how the activities went, but first to create the relevant ActivExpression flipchart.

I GOT A FREAKING B!

Oh my God! I've just signed in to the online results service and found I've got a B!! Amazed, astounded, proud, you name it, I'm it!!!!

Desperate to get my head around what I want from a good KS3 scheme of work

Key Elements (Secondary): Curriculum and Lesson Planning - NCETM

The above link has become my starting point. I'm hugely interested in the 'Curriculum vs Syllabus' debate and am acutely aware that what I have produced so far is most definitely just a syllabus.

How do I create a curriculum? What needs to be included? What gives the greatest support for teachers in the department at all stages of their career? Apart from actually finding things to include, how do I stop myself from going the other way and including too much?

I read a quote on Twitter from @TonyParkin last night, which has awakened my interest:

Where people equate curriculum with syllabus they limit planning to consideration of content or body of knowledge to be transmitted #ncr11

which I then entered in to an small exchange which resulted in Tony sending me the following link: curriculum theory and practice. I shall read with interest.

Another consideration is the format of my schemes. What do staff actually need to plan and deliver lessons effectively? Minimum? Maximum?

I've bookmarked lots of web pages to refer back to, but as ever, I'll probably forget I stored them, so I'll share them here : my bookmarks on curriculum change.

What I'm going to do now is make a start. I'm often guilty of looking into and around things so much that I don't make a start. So, here goes.....

Managing Change in Education: Individual and Organizational Perspectives Published in association with The Open University: Amazon.co.uk: Dr Nigel D Bennett, Dr Megan Crawford, Mr Colin R Riches: Books

Managing Change in Education: Individual and Organizational Perspectives Published in association with The Open University: Amazon.co.uk: Dr Nigel D Bennett, Dr Megan Crawford, Mr Colin R Riches: Books

The year of the blog

Great Maths Teaching Ideas

In 2010 'everybody' started doing it.

They were doing it for themselves, they were doing it for others, They did it anonymously, they did it by declaring themselves to the world. They did it for information sharing, they did it for profit. They did it to educate, they did it to sell something. Many even got their classes doing it.

BLOGGING!

I've read so many blogs over the past few months, and it think it's set to be huge in 2011.

Hell, even I on here doing it! Every thought, every purchase, every event I attend, I'm blogging it. (Regarding my MA and a little about school of course!)

At the moment, I know no-one's reading because I've not told anyone about it. But one day, when I'm good at blogging, and have something worthwhile to say I might pass on the link. I might even post it to my twitter, but there's some serious blogging individuals out there, the likes of which I am no match for!

The point of this post is to declare one blog that I do enjoy. It's informative, which I like. It does sometimes try to sell you something but I ignore those posts. It gives me good ideas for classroom resources for mathematics. And the name says it all. "Great Maths Teaching Ideas".

Before the first seminar

Tomorrow is the first day of our new module: Leading and Managing the Mathematics Curriculum. We've been set the task of encapsulating the vision for the maths department.

I've just filled out a page of how I see the department at the moment - and it makes for quite sad reading.

More new books

I ordered a few more books this week, and here's what I got:

This one, I bought as it seems to be related to our next MA module: Leading and Managing the Mathematics Curriculum. However, Having a flick through (no, I've not got to reading it yet!), it seems to be more about leading people.

This next one I reall should have bought for the last module, but it's still going to be an enlightening read, rather than just relevant extracts:

And finally, nothing enlightening, but a practical book for lesson starter ideas (I'm not an ideas person, you know):