Peter Williams
@MathsImpact
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Secondary head of maths, lover of puzzles, computer programmer, proud geek.
Leicester, England
Joined June 2013
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Controversial opinion:
The effort involved in doing a BBQ is not worth the pay off.
Just cook food in the oven and eat it in the garden.
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Options evening tonight.
Here is my extravagant display.
It took me hours.
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Do the desks in everyone's classroom slowly creep forwards during the week?
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This year my school got rid of target grades for almost all data collections.
It's utterly transformed the conversations about progress.
They don't know their target, and we don't predict their grade until they're in an actual exam year.
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One of my year 11 boys walked into his maths lesson yesterday clutching a chess set.
It was his own, he brought it into school to play with his friends at break time.
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NASUWT members need to hang their heads in shame, there is no excuse for failing to send in your ballot, it came through your door with a pre-paid envelope.
Whether you approve of strike action or not, you must make your voice heard.
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We snuck the clocks forward 4 hours, so the boys think it's nearly 11pm, and that they can stay up until midnight to see the new year in.
This parenting tip is brought to you by Christmas holiday exhaustion.
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Teachers will probably take strike action this year.
Lots of people will have lots of things you say about it, but I think many miss they key issue.
1/9
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I put this in our staff room at the start of the year, and I stock it up when I remember to.
Just some simple quick things like instant pasta.
What I love is that the contents are always changing because other people add things too.
I didn't ask anyone to, they just did.
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Clearing out the store cupboard, and look what I found buried at the back!
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Apparently my class didn't want to do the thing I left them for cover today in my absence, so they hid it before the cover teacher arrived.
*sigh*
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Education research isn't meant to dictate the way you teach.
It's meant to give you a statistical advantage when deciding what to do with your limited hours.
You can't test out every idea yourself, so stand on the shoulders of giants, don't reinvent the wheel.
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You can yell about how unfair it is all you want, but that won't change the fundamental fact that teachers are essential, and not enough people are choosing to be them.
Sufficiently more pay will fix that, alongside better working conditions.
9/9
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No-one actually gets a decent amount of sleep on the last night of the holidays right?
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PowerPoint shortcuts (whilst presenting) to make your life easier:
B, get a black screen
W, get a white screen
Ctrl-L switch to the laser pointer
Ctrl-P switch to the pen for annotating
Ctrl-E switch to the eraser
Ctrl-M hide/show annotations
E, erase all ink on the slide
Powerpoint: in the middle of a presentation, press "w" on your keyboard to generate a blank screen
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Timetabling principle number 1:
The students who find learning the hardest need the most expert teachers.
Timetabling principle number 2:
That is *never* the top set.
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We ran a walking talking mock during the Easter break using the AQA shadow papers (Edexcel and OCR have their own as well).
Here's how we did it, and why I think it worked brilliantly:
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I just realised that there are qualified teachers working in schools right now who weren't alive in the 90s.
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A student is outside my classroom because of their disruptive behaviour.
Another student pipes up with:
"Sir, why can't you just kick them out of the class?"
I already have, I say, confused.
"No, I mean permanently so we can get on with learning" they reply.
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Lots of teachers chatting about email as if sending and receiving email outside of your working hours is unusual.
Most people in most jobs will get work related emails when they aren't working.
Guess what... They don't read them until they're at work.
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So what do we do instead?
We give them a performance indicator, which ranks their general approach to learning.
They are either ambitious, active, passive or resistant.
They know what those words mean, and they know what steps will move them towards active/ambitious.
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It's the start of an academic year, and if you're a maths teacher you need to know about
@missradders
maths planning padlet.
A one stop shop for hundreds of excellent resources from across the internet, all in one handy organised place.
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For those asking for the descriptors, this is what we share with parents alongside the reports.
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In a lesson, some things need to be on pre-prepared slides.
Most things do not.
If you can demonstrate it live by hand, you almost always should.
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Today I learnt:
The hatch marks indicating congruence are actually Roman Numerals.
Also, if you need more than three, you skip to V, because IV and VI are easily mixed up when rotated.
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This is how most students feel about disruptive behaviour most of the time.
Of course the child in the corridor has a right to an education, but so do the other 29 students in the room.
Whose right is greater?
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Just started to put together a stationery order for school.
Student exercise books have increased in price by 66%
That is a significant dent in my faculty budget.
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Gender neutral terms to refer to your whole class:
Children
Students
Kids
People
Scholars
Learners
Mathematicians (substitute your own subject here)
And when they're being annoying:
Muppets
Numpties
Noodles
Oi, you lot!
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@GIFTpeer_haven
@researchEDLeics
It's really disappointing that despite being in the same building as the person who might actually appreciate this feedback, you took to a public social media platform to share your concerns with the whole world.
This is not how your address issues, it's just virtue signalling.
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My favourite part of teaching bearings is showing students airport runways.
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Assessment is about me as a teacher.
It's an attempt to answer the question "did I teach this well?"
It isn't about the students.
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Mr. Williams' Tech Tips:
If you make worksheets in PowerPoint, you can change it to be A4 size, which is much more helpful for printing!
The setting is in the design tab, it takes a few seconds to change.
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So whilst individually teachers are striking for lots of personal reasons such as workload and pay, the real issue here is that the market is failing.
The current job under its current pay and conditions is not attractive enough to fill posts.
8/9
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Seeing other people teach is the best part of my job.
Isn't this such a brilliant question, and the way it was delivered using paired turn and talk to explore the misconception in each of the "incorrect" models was wonderful.
So much mathematical thinking was going on!
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Just discovered that 10yo has a secondary placement at the specialist provision we wanted.
All that anxiety we've been facing for months is now completely gone.
I am a joyful teary mess now.
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I showed my bright year 10 class that they can solve quadratic and simultaneous equations on their calculator if they by the £29 one instead of the £12 one.
Their response:
"Sir, is GCSE maths pay to win?"
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Solving quadratics is a story to be told, and the sequence in which you teach the different steps and approaches determines that narrative.
With thanks to
@jemmaths
for her talk on curriculum at
#rEDLeicester
, here is a thread on telling stories.
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@Cshearer41
Yellow has angles x,x,180-2x.
Orange then has angles 2x,2x,180-4x
Red has 3x,3x,180-6x.
Pink has 4x,4x,180-8x.
Finally, pink is similar to the whole, so 180-8x=x
So x=20
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9yo drew this as part of an "all about me" project in school.
I bet you can't guess what it is... 🤣
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In a few short weeks I'm going to be a head of maths.
I've just had a fantastic evening at my new school chatting with some potential candidates about how fantastic a place it is.
I am super excited for this next chapter in my teaching journey!
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Unhelpful:
"Two negatives make a positive"
Helpful:
"Subtracting a negative is equivalent to adding it's inverse"
Precise language matters.
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If a student says "when will I ever need this", it suggests that they have a utilitarian view of education.
But where did that view come from?
I would suggest it might have come from teachers...
1/6
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Did you know:
It's actually illegal to sell teaching resources you have created yourself and used in your own classroom without permission from your school.
As your employer they own the IP on anything you create "in the line of duty"
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Dear experienced teachers:
The things you do which seem obvious, probably aren't.
Please talk about them with other teachers, even the small everyday things. If it makes your life easier, it will help them too!
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ChatGPT invented and programmed a brand new logic puzzle.
It's quite good fun.
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Along with these identifiers, we give them a list of behaviours associated with each one.
E.g.
An passive learner sits quietly when stuck and does not ask for help from other students or the teacher.
An active learner doesn't give up if the first answer is not correct.
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Recruitment and retention are struggling.
They have fallen in the last decade, and although COVID gave us one better year, things are back in a downward trend.
6/9
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Maths twitter, help me out.
Where can I get a bank of high quality resources for KS3 students who are struggling to access the curriculum.
I'm not a big fan of twinkl for various reasons, but I don't know what alternatives there are...
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Teachers:
How many other teachers are in your family?
I have a few: Mum, Grandma, Aunt.
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Visualisers are a perfect piece of tech for all teachers to own.
Plug and play, zero setup, easy to use and extremely flexible.
Hit me up with your top tips for making the most of a visualiser!
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They no longer focus on a number, instead the focus is on actions.
To be less passive I need to stop...
To be more ambitious I should start doing...
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If recruitment and retention isn't fixed, the problem will continue to spiral.
The only sure fire way to fix the problem is with money.
The government knows this, which is why they pour cash into shortage subject recruitment all the time.
7/9
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Just gonna put this out there:
"What is your greatest weakness" is the absolute worst interview question ever.
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What a stupid defense.
It would be far better if parents actually read the detail of a report, instead of glancing at the one word summary and ignoring the rest.
Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of a school equips you to make a clear decision.
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Just in case anyone needs to hear this:
It's ok for your house to be a dump, and to not be ready for Christmas at all.
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I'm working on perimeter with my low ability year 8, so I made a thing inspired by this:
@ChrisMcGrane84
@kgillies1986
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GCSE maths exam top tip:
If a question asks you to explain a mistake, don't.
Just do it correctly from the start, and say "it should be this".
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The boys insisted on the badge today, so I'm going to keep a tally of how many people say happy birthday.
5 so far...
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Thanks to
@StellaDudzic
, I've just discovered that the new model Casio calculators don't deal with the standard form button in the same way at all.
I really like the new models, but this is not a good change...
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It's official, with a single lesson on Desmos I am fully bought in, I could actually see what my class were all doing at the same time, give directed feedback, pause them on a specific screen, and I know that they all managed to complete some work!
@Desmos
love it!
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Time to break out my most excellent presentation again.
Options evening tonight.
Here is my extravagant display.
It took me hours.
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Fun fact, the FAST acronym for stroke signs is based on heavily gendered medical research.
It's unusual for men to have a stroke without those symptoms.
It's quite common for a woman to have a stroke with completely different symptoms.
Same goes for heart attacks.
I had a stroke last Thursday while eating a sandwich. I didn't recognise it, the people I went to dinner with 4 hours later didn't recognise it, the doctor in A&E didn’t recognise it when I went in 6 days afterwards. My face, arm, speech were fine. So here are some extra tips
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People will complain that they are greedy.
Teachers will argue that their role is essential and worthy of its salary, which has declined in real terms against inflation dramatically.
3/9
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Print your seating plan and put it in a plastic wallet.
Now you can use a whiteboard pen to record things as they happen in the lesson.
Positive/negative behaviour.
Who you directed questions at.
Who needed extra help on this topic.
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Top tip:
Buy foam dice for doing probability experiments in the classroom.
They're silent.
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It's such a joy to be in a school where students say hello to me in the corridor and at break time because they're polite and friendly by default.
So many of them have gone out of their way to introduce themselves to me because I'm a new face.
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Heard Michael Wilshaw on R4 this morning talking about oftsed.
His defense of grading schools was that parents want to know if it's a good school, they don't want to have to read a report of positive and negative points and make the decision for themselves.
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People will complain that they are lazy.
Teachers will argue that they are really very busy, overworked, and definitely not lazy.
2/9
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If your response to someone explaining how to use a teaching strategy well is to say "we've been doing that for years, this isn't new", perhaps you should have been telling everyone about it as well?
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Neither of those arguments matter though, because the call and response is subjective.
How hard you work, and what you earn for it are largely determined by the market.
If enough people will do the job for lower wages, lower wages are what they'll get.
4/9
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@ShakinthatChalk
I think this is a bad take.
All teachers have other commitments outside of work, and they change over time.
All staff go through phases of not having the capacity to do stuff, and phases where they have spare time which they might choose to devote to more work.
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Had a great time thinking about maths teaching yesterday, but this is the quote I really can't shake from my head:
In the majority of mathematics classrooms, for the majority of time, the majority of pupils are…
…simply waiting
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Exercise books are only really useful as a tool for helping students to think hard in the lesson.
What students have written is basically worthless a week later.
Full exercise books belong in the bin.
During the Great Marking Era, exercise books became disproportionately valued as a record of teacher performance. With that era ending, we must radically evaluate the purpose of exercise books and what we expect to see in them.
In our dept, what we expect to see from books is:
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Today I noticed that adding in standard form is just collecting like terms:
2x + 3x
2p + 3p
2√5 + 3√5
2π + 3π
2x10³ + 3x10³
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Just finished reading the wee free men at bedtime, and the 7yo had taken to shouting
Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willna' be fooled again!
When he doesn't want to follow an instruction.
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@Strickomaster
"Why is your attendance data so low?"
Because everyone was sick a lot.
"And what did you do about it?"
Followed government advice and told them to stay at home until they were better.
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Thinking about roots and prime factorisation, so I'm putting together a few tasks which I might use next week.
Thoughts / suggestions would be most welcome.
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Apparently I have a receptionist now, and my house has become sentient.
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A lot of people have asked about the criteria statements we share with students.
I checked, and we actually have them on our public facing website for parents to access, you can see a copy here:
This year my school got rid of target grades for almost all data collections.
It's utterly transformed the conversations about progress.
They don't know their target, and we don't predict their grade until they're in an actual exam year.
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@charlottecarso1
Why wouldn't you let someone reuse lesson plans in their training year?
Seems like a perfectly reasonable idea to me...
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Completing the square...
I'm so used to doing (x-b/2)^2+c-(b/2)^2 that I don't think it ever occurred to me to split c first.
Not that I have thought about it, I think the version on the left is a lot more intuitive than what I'm used to on the right:
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If you take away the grading, and leave everything else, you immediately remove the cliff edge nature of the judgement.
You also enable parents to engage properly with school choice, by removing the temptation of the shortcut.
What exactly are the downsides?
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I for one would quite like to live in a society where a single income is sufficient for a household.
No matter who is earning the income.
Or who is in the household.
"Get back to work" benefits do not achieve this.
Better pay and a lower cost of living does.
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DfE confirms that formula sheets will be available for maths and science exams.
Exam boards will have updated inserts published in January.
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