I can’t quite describe how elated I am!  Ignoring last years fiasco, these tests have narrowed the curriculum, the teaching opportunities and pupils enthusiasm for the subject for years.  The league tables that accompanied them often narrowed a school’s focus onto just the key Level 5 boundary pupils.

Can all of that really be gone?  Fingers crossed!

CC image from 713 Avenue on flickr

We have just beta released a new free maths games website which is starting to get quite a bit of traction in the UK. It’s free, has no ads, and allows kids to compete head to head but doesn’t allow them to communicate directly. It is really KS1 & 2 focused but we are getting lots of use from secondaries (or we were last week before half term).

We have just added a few new teacher features (class registration, reports etc) and if you have any ideas or queries drop me a line, or if you like it you could put in a link.

I have had a chance to look at the site this weekend and to test it with a low ability class of 11/12 year olds today and I’m delighted with it!

The site allows pupils from around the world to compete against each other at mental maths questions in a completely safe environment, no actual personal details just clever usernames made from colours and animals (I’m bluepig22!).

The competitive element is the clincher, the class I tried it with today are difficult and disaffected but did more Maths today than they have for most of the year.

The site is simply designed and my class enjoyed beating not only each other but pupils from Brazil, Australia, France, Japan……

I’ve not even looked fully into the class reports feature but this could be most useful for identifying weaknesses and future teaching points.

A nice touch is the graduation medal that you get when you have done really well at a certain level, this really encouraged pupils to move onto a more difficult level rather than sticking with the easy questions all day.

An excellent, free resource, well done Richard!  Let me know what you think

“Blue sky thinking”

Thanks Frank for tagging me to participate in the meme passion quilt. It’s the first time I’ve been ‘tagged’ in one of these things and I appreciate it

The picture I chose is a photo I took at Glastonbury Festival some years ago, I got lucky lying by the Jazz stage with an old digital camera. I chose it as it encapsulates by passion for sharing the bigger picture with my pupils. Something that is increasingly easy to forget to do with the institutional pressures of so many key exam classes this year. So thanks for reminding me of this Frank!

I’ll tag these 5 educators who’s blogs have inspired me: kwhobbes, coolcatteacher, tombarrett, dougbellshaw, jonesieboy

Here are the rules:

1. Think about what you are passionate about teaching your students.
2. Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
3. Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
4. Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.