The Little Book of Emergency Maths Lessons

It’s finally finished! 😀

The Little Book of Emergency Maths Lessons is now awaiting approval for the iBookstore, so you will be able to get your free copy through iTunes shortly.

For those of you too impatient to wait, or those who do not have shiny i-devices to use, you can download the pdf here:

Little Book of Emergency Maths Lessons

I’d prefer you head for the iBookstore if possible though, as frankly it’s more exciting for me!

Enjoy!

 

My first week as a Head of Department

So, in my first week (and a bit) as a HoD, here’s what I’ve achieved:

– Learned all the names of my department, and how to pronounce them (even the Polish and Portuguese ones) correctly.

– Cleared out half of our very large storeroom to create a small office space for myself, as I have no classroom of my own, and we share our ‘office’ with two other departments (and no-one has their own desk in there).

 – Managed to just about keep up with all the things I needed to do with my form.

 – Instigated Puzzle of the Week at new school.

 – Impressed the media dept with my use of Twitter for @MathsTopTips and our school revision account for Yr 11.

 – Wrote a KS4 and part of a KS5 exam results analysis report.

 – Wrote a draft Department Development Plan

 – Arranged to merge and split sets 2 and 3 by gender in both Yr 11 halves. (More on that another day).

 – Chased our missing teacher planner order (but no joy as yet)

 – learned where things were

 – learned who does what (a bit)

 – Collected/hunted down several naughty students who didn’t fancy turning up for the detention their teacher had set.

 – taught some lessons!

 – been joint observed in my third ever lesson with my Yr 10’s (who had 2 teachers and an endless stream of cover teachers last year) and got ‘good’.  

 – joint observed my boss (the Principal) and gave her the feedback afterwards.

 – Collated all the data on Yr 11, including targets, working at grades in Maths, working at grades in English, how many hours of ‘extra’ maths they are having, and in which group they are having it, and put it all in a shiny, colour-coded spreadsheet.

 – Got a good start on deciding which students will be getting 1-1 intervention if possible from my ‘intervention guy’.

 – Arranged for new shelves to be put in the maths/DT/IT office meaning we have our worktop space back to use our laptops on etc.

 – Chaired my first meeting (which I made cakes for)

 – Survived my first line management meeting, able to answer all her questions.

 – Answered 12 million emails* from various people asking for various things.

 – Rang some parents.

 – Made SOLO grids showing progress through the 2 topics I’ve done so far, and how to get to the next level etc.

 – Got up at 6.30am each morning to get in for around 7.30 to crack on (Mr Hughes will vouch that this is nothing short of a miracle)

 – Bid for the school ‘innovations fund’

 – printed out lesson times as a timetable for the school day for each room (after getting it wrong and letting Yr 9 out 10 minutes early…. oops.)

 – Written 2 department newsletters to get out the important info

 – Talked for an hour with our IT guy about how we can get some functioning IT in the dept (not his fault!)

 – Started to organise open evening stuff for the end of this month.

 – Had several of our male Yr 11 students WANT to show me what they’ve done in the lesson, as they are proud of it 🙂

 – probably more stuff that I’ve forgotten.

…. No wonder I’m tired! 😉

I felt the need to write this out, as I’m currently feeling a bit daunted by the sheer amount of things still on my ‘to-do’ list.  I thought it might be helpful to reflect on what I’ve already achieved.

Bring it on!!!

*may be a slight exaggeration