This term I've been trialling using sentence stems-classes saying key ideas out loud. In #MatysToday I tried it with year 11 higher tier revision. We all felt a bit silly at first but it genuinely helped them to consolidate their understanding and improved the quality of their explanations.

Lovely set of quadratic sequences from @taylorda01.bsky.social used in #MathsToday. We particularly liked exploring the different ways to approach sequences (f) and (g). My year 10s also wanted to explore cubic sequences and quartics! I love their enthusiasm. taylorda01.weebly.com/uploads/4/2/...

I was so proud of one of my year 13's in #Mathstoday. He said he just didn't get what independent events meant. He said he knew he should have learnt it ages ago but had been too embarrassed to ask before today. I praised him for identifying a gap in his knowledge and doing something about it.

In #mathstoday we had just learnt how to find the area of a segment so finished with these problems. I really liked how on one table of 4 pupils they had 3 different methods for the bottom left problem. How would you break it up?

I certainly like your idea of including 8 as a cube. I wont be adding zero to this part of my lesson though unless pupils bring it up because it doesn't link to the physical square like the rest do, however we do discuss zero later in the lesson. Thanks for the feedback.

Found my year 7 class discussing Numberblocks in #MathsToday to help them with square numbers. Such a brilliant TV show that clearly has an impact on children's understanding of number. #iteachmaths

Love this

That is a very valid point! I took the image from the internet somewhere years ago and never questioned it before 🤦‍♀️. Will have to adapt the question slightly. Thanks for pointing it out 👍

There's definitely a lot of bugs around. My husband is a primary teacher trying to organise the school nativity for next week with a third of the children absent this week. Currently there's no Mary or Joseph, only a donkey!

Thank you! I will show them this next lesson. But I'm pleased I let them figure it out for themselves first.

Really proud of my year 8's in #MathsToday. They loved these questions working out the weight of each apple. But I was particularly impressed with them explaining their reasoning, something I've been trying so hard to develop in them this year.

Great question in #FurtherMaths while studying matrices for stretches today. If the determinant of the matrix is the area scale factor, what happens when the determinant is zero? I told the class to trial it and find out. Lovely bit of investigative work testing out their ideas.
#MathsToday

I have purposely tried not to make a big deal about negatives, as I think in the past my own worry has passed onto the pupils. We would talk that one through as "we have 3 lots of 5b and 3 lots of -6, so we have 15b and -18, which is 15b - 18". I'm yet to tackle a negative in front of the brackets 😬

In #MathsToday I used stem sentences to support teaching of expanding brackets. I was pleasantly surprised to hear pupils respond to questions using the structure of the stem sentence without me prompting them to do so. Would love to hear others' experiences of stem sentences in secondary maths.

Not exactly, but I was teaching this during a lesson about proving statements using algebra and using counter examples was a nice addition to this. After these non-maths statements we disproved some maths ones.

All months contain the letter R No one in year 10 has ever seen Eurovision All birds can fly Every Disney film contains a princess

While learning proof with year 10 in #MathsToday, I found out which of my pupils I can discuss Eurovision with later in the year thanks to these statements we disproved with counterexamples. #eurovision

Lovely impromptu moment in #MathsToday (yesterday), Head of upper school who is also a science teacher walked into my rearranging formulas lesson and said "oh I can do that! Here, try this one I've been using today" Great for pupils to see how different subjects link together. #iteachmaths

Thank you 🙏. I feel a trip to my local B&M is necessary this weekend. Only challenge will be only buying the advent calendar. Whenever I go in there I always walk out with the most random selection of things.

Omg, where did you get this???

In #MathsToday pupils vote which of these were equivalent to the original expression. 1 vote Mario, 15 votes Luigi, 1 vote Bowser and 20 votes Peaches. One pupil explained she voted for Peaches because she just knew you multiply. So we then looked at it expanded and why multiplying works.

Probably the first one because some pairs had considered decimal values for the base, others considered negatives, this then lead into a discussion on where the cut off point was, so considering 1 for the base.

Lovely #oracy work on indices in #MathsToday. We haven't covered negative indices yet but this got them pondering negative indices and considering non integer values for a and b as well as 0 and 1. Looking forward to delving deeper next lesson.

While simplifying fractions in #MathsToday, a pupil asked me why the divisibility by 3 trick works. I felt daft I'd never queried it before! We had a lovely time using algebra to prove it works for 2 digit numbers then 3 digits numbers. Love it when a lesson goes off piste like that.

In #MathsToday I used this activity to gauge and challenge my pupils' understanding of parallel lines. Two were convinced b are parallel because they look like train tracks. Really made me think about the language we use when defining these things.

I do something similar. I say "The 1 with a tan is sexy' and "The 1 in a cot is cosy" and accompany these with a cute photo of my son as a baby in his cot and this classically tanned sexy man 😂

2. When having class discussions, include the phrases “How can we say it better?” or “How can we say it like a Mathematician?”
3. Hand out the Talk Tactics sheets from Voice21 and direct them to the type of communicator you want them to be.
4. Have Discussion Guidelines to promote good listening.

So, what can we do to get all pupils engaging in effective discussions?
1. Make it explicit that pupils should be discussing what they notice, comparing their methods, making predictions, etc. You can do this by popping some sentence starters on the board.

In #MathsToday I have been looking at where my department are in terms of developing oracy skills. I found that many activities lend themselves to discussion work naturally but that not all pupils engage in these discussions and not all pupils demonstrate authentic listening skills.
#oracy #voice21

Lower prior attainment is probably a fairer phrase and one used in my school but I fell into old habits with that post, not to mention I wouldn't have had enough characters to write it!

It probably is yes. But now you've made me question whether I should describe them differently. Can you suggest an alternative for those pupils who find maths difficult?