Mr H

I've been making use of some 'fun' activities with the younger pupils this year and thought I'd share some of my experiences:

Firstly there are Maths board games which my department had in the store cupboard. I had used some of them as a student teacher and thought I'd give them a go. Some are really good, but there are a few which are just too complicated for the kids to get their head around. Fear not, though, these can still have their uses! If the game itself is just too complicated, you can take the questions and use them in your own made-up game with simpler rules. Additionally, the questions are usually short and thus lend themselves well to making up a set of Learner Response Questions or something similar. Saves you a lot of work later!

Another useful resource are online Maths games sites. There are millions of sites out there providing every type of game imaginable. While a few have only tenuous links to Maths (the bird-catapulting one springs to mind!) most are very useful.  Countdown is always a favourite, as is 10 Quick Questions, and with new and more stylish games appearing all the time, this can be a great way to get the kids learning on that tricky last period on a Friday. The chances are they won't even realise they're learning - they'll just think it's all great fun.

Finally, you get the subscription websites where you buy a licence to access online games and competitions. This has probably been the most successful 'fun' activity I've used all year. I'm probably a bit biased, because I'm the one who arranged the purchase of the licence, but I think this type of site can be really great educational resources.  Since you're paying good money for them, they know they can't afford to fill their sites with pointless rubbish (and bird-catapulting is strictly frowned upon). I also think the kids love being able to compete against others from their class and, indeed, from across the world, as they challenge other users who are logged on at the same time.  The one we use is from the World Maths Day folk. It's great and very varied, but with just one setback - the kids tend to pick the easiest difficulty level so they can get nice easy questions and beat whoever they're playing against. However, it does allow you to sit back smugly and watch as they get beaten by a six-year-old from Azerbaijan.

Hello folks, hope everyone has enjoyed a nice long holiday, time for the final term - I hope I can distract you from job-hunting long enough to hear about my experiences of coop learning.

When I started my Probation, something which was quite new to me was coop learning. I hadn't experienced much of it during my teacher training, and suddenly found myself in a school where it was in constant use across every department. How could I keep up?

Luckily, the school arranged some pretty comprehensive training, including a two-day course for all new staff (Probationer or otherwise) which showcased a lot of different techniques. Others I have picked up at in-service training, CPD or conferences. And of course, there's the good old "make it up" methodology which can be very useful for creating coop learning activities specific to your subject!

Here are a  few activities which I've tried which have been successful (and a few which haven't)

Think-Pair-Share

One of the staples of coop learning! Pretty easy to adapt to any subject, just give them a question, let them come up with ideas, share these with a partner and then explain to the class or another pair. I've found this good with most classes, but sometimes with the more difficult ones, they'll talk about anything BUT the question. I think this is really one which works best when you can depend on the pupils to actually worry about being asked to explain their ideas to the class - if they're happy to say in front of the class that they don't have any answers / suggestions whatsoever, then this may not be too successful.

 Gallery Walk

Basically the idea is to get them in groups making posters to display what they've learned. Then team them up so each team has one person from every poster group. Each team starts at a certain poster and the person who worked on that poster has to explain it to the rest of the team. After one minute, each team moves to a different poster and the process repeats. Thus everyone in the class has to explain a poster at some point. This works really well when you've got a topic with lots of different parts to it, so that different groups will have different ideas. It can be time-consuming to make the posters but I think it's worth it. Just avoid using with really short topics otherwise they all put exactly the same things on the posters!

Expert Groups

You split up a topic, and one person from each table has to become an expert in a certain part of the topic, then teach it to the rest of their table. They will team up with other 'experts' in the same area to learn their little bit and then return to their table to do the teaching. This has been a fairly successful activity for me. It isn't really suitable for teaching a topic for the first time (would you want your child being taught something new by another child?) but its great for revising a topic that hasn't been covered in a while. I have found this works great when you've got another adult in the room (eg a classroom assistant or, if you're lucky, a coop teacher) as you can dedicate even more time to each group of experts. A few pitfalls I've encountered are ending up with the least able children trying to teach the hardest part of the topic - you may need to do some crafty manipulation to make sure the ones who struggle most get an easier part to teach. Also watch out that you don't have too many expert groups or you'll never be able to help them all prepare.

Anyway, I hope this inspires you go go out and get the kids working together!

Hello folks, your newest Probationer blogger here.

I'm a Maths probationer, and I've decided to use this blog to talk about some of the tools and strategies that have helped me over the past 8 months - starting with some very useful bits of technology.

As a Probationer, one of the biggest challenges seems to be getting used to the many bits of technology used in schools. I think that there are so many systems to learn – email, registration, whiteboard software etc – that it could be easy to forget that the pupils should be making use of ICT as well. One tool which I have found very useful in helping incorporate ICT into lessons is the Learner Response Systems – individual handsets on which pupils can answer questions.

At first I thought these handsets would be difficult to use, but I soon learned that this isn’t the case – and I’d like to dispel the four myths which seem to frighten most teachers off:

• Myth 1: I need an interactive whiteboard.    Not at all! All you need is a PC with a USB port and the appropriate software (which will have come with the handsets). It is best if you have a data projector so you can display questions on the board, but if you don’t have this, you can still use the self-paced questions. 
• Myth 2: Pupils can’t be trusted not to break the handsets.      While accidents are bound to happen, in six months of using the system, none of my pupils has ever broken a handset – maliciously or accidentally. You know your pupils better than anyone and will know which classes will be responsible enough. 
• Myth 3: Pupils will type inappropriate things.     Of course you will have some immature kids who will try this, but you can control it easily – you can select the type of answer you want. You can set questions up to receive only ‘true’/’false’ answers, or answers which contain only numbers.
• Myth 4: It takes ages to set up the equipment.    It will take ages to set things up the first time you use it with a particular class – but by the second attempt, they’ll remember what to do, which buttons to press and how to get started. After all, they probably spend and inordinate amount of time doing things on their mobile, which isn’t so very different.

Anyway, I hope that this will perhaps encourage a few more of you to make use of this type of technology if you have it sitting in your department somewhere. Please feel free to leave some comments about your view on using this ype of technology in the classroom.