Reply To: Wanted – Buddies to Spiral Curriculum

[Vanessa Wright]

I thought I would start by talking about the ‘Check Ins’. It is double sided and has 4 questions we worked on during the week and 4 that reflect on topics covered previously. We have 3x 70 min lessons each week and I found the check ins were hijacking the lesson and done students needed the whole time to do the work, whilst others covered it in 20. (Mixed ability class). So I decided to send it home in our first lesson of the week, collect it in the last, Mark it over the weekend, create focus groups for our first weekly lesson to build skills or extend, depending on the groups need (a consolidating lesson). That leaves me 2 lessons a week for rich, investigations, e.g – 3 act maths, ReSolve, RIME, Maths 300. I’m happy to share these resources, but would love to know what you use as well? But, I was still spending 3hrs on the weekend marking, sorting, recording, grouping, and finding relevant consolidation tasks. So this week I decided to create a making sheet with  well explained answers calculated in a variety of ways. I will spend some lesson time getting students to peer asses and write down answers. Then they will receive there own where they can fill in s tick box that lets me know if they need more time, almost there or feel confident. Basically taking control of there own learning. I will only need to record, group and organise resources, saves me time and they get a richer experience. Any feedback or ideas would be great. Thanks.