MathsZest

In an attempt to get myself blogging more regularly, I decided to join the #MTBoS blogging initiative, so here is my first entry, a day in the life. I thought I’d choose Tuesday of this week, as it was a full day of teaching, followed by parents evening, but as it happens, there was to be a twist in the tale.

7.15: Today my husband was able to take the boys to the childminder, so I can head straight to school, arriving at 7.50. Before school time was devoted to marking my year 10 assessments. There were only 10 of them, so I knew I had time, and was even able to set up the tracking spreadsheet, as well as getting all my resources in order for the day ahead.

8.35: Department briefing, which I came out of with quite a to do list! School starts at 8.50 and I was straight to assembly with my year 9 form. This weeks theme is setting high expectations.

9.10: The teaching starts with yr 12 maths resit group. Just had 7 pass their November resit, so the class had shrunk a little, and with mocks going on, there were even less! Started as I always do with a corbettmaths 5aday, then it was working through a past paper as they have their mock at the end of the week. Saw an email that the head had to cancel all her praise appointments with pupils….

10.10: Guidance with my form. We were looking at Businesses today. A split lesson, so half an hour of Guidance, then half hour break, before the second half hour of Guidance. Had good discussions around a Dragons Den clip, and which offer was the best. Saw an email that there was a full staff briefing at 3.20pm.

11.40: My beautiful top set year 7. A group full of high ability pupils, who love learning. Spent some improvement time on their home learning and previous class work, then it was into learning how to plot a graph from its equation.

12.40: Year 11 GCSE foundation group. These are a hard bunch of kids. Most haven’t got much motivation and very little belief in themselves. They were calculating circumference of a circle, and could do it, but were struggling to settle down and focus just on their work.

13.40: A half hour break for lunch, in which I printed out my data sheets for parents evening, then onto the last lesson. Another year 7 group, set 2 (out of 3). Again, started with some improve my work in their home learning, then was finishing their first algebra topic on formula – writing and substituting into. A lively bunch, who are on the whole quite keen, but chatty too.

15.10: The teaching day finished and time to head for a staff meeting. You may have guessed by now that the head had received the OFSTED phone call in the morning, and they would be arriving the next morning. Our school is currently requires improvement and everyone had been working really hard to improve. We knew they’d be coming soon, so not unexpected, but not great timing with most teachers about to head into the hall for 2 1/2 hours to meet with year 8 parents. I make a phone call to my husband to see if there’s any chance he can take the boys to the childminders again in the morning so I can head straight into school.

16.00: Parents evening starts and it’s busy to begin with. Have lots of positive things to say to most parents. It gets a bit quieter towards the end, and although my last 20 minutes weren’t booked, I stay until the end as I really wanted to see those 2 parents who hadn’t turned up earlier, and am just hoping they were late.

18.30: They didn’t turn up, so I head back to my classroom to start preparing for the next day. Most of my lessons are planned, but I had some assessments for yr 11s to file in their folders, which now really need to be in there before tomorrow’s lesson. Those other little tidying jobs on my list couldn’t wait now either.

19.30 I finally leave school, seeing several classroom lights still on as I head for home. It’s not that we want to be different for OFSTED, but know everything must be at the best of what we do, something that would be impossible to do all the time, although it always what we strive for.

21.00: I’ve been home half an hour. Boys were in bed, and my husband has made tea. I’ve had a sit down, refuelled, and it’s back to work. I knew I had my feedback lesson to prepare for year 10s, but with our visitors now coming, I also had to change my planned year 7 lesson from a basic skills fortnightly lesson to a normal curriculum lesson, my seating plans to update and print out in case they were needed, the Teacher Toolkit 5 minute lesson plans to fill in – this wasn’t too hard as I plan in my head using these – and a couple of tweaks to my yr 11 and yr 8 lessons.

00.30: I fall into bed knowing the alarm is going off in little over 5 hours. I wouldn’t normally stay up that late working, but I want to do my best for my school over the next two days. We work extremely hard to do our best for our pupils and I want OFSTED to see that.