This year I have had a little promotion to Gifted & Talented Coordinator in Maths. And this week was the first time I ticked off some of the things on my job description. On Monday we had an INSET day. In the morning there was a whole school session, half about More Able, Gifted, and Talented education and half about Learning to Learn (shortened to MAG&T and L2L respectively). In the afternoon I led a session in the maths department about how we wish to choose to identify our gifted students. We did a little card sort activity in pairs and used the results to agree as a group the criteria we felt most delineated which students we would consider gifted in maths. I wrote this up and added it to the MAG&T policy that my Head of Maths and I wrote while we were part of the G&T action group last year.
One provision we make for the more able and gifted students in maths is to enter them into the national Maths Challenges. The first of these was on Thursday, for students in years 11 to 13. I organised two lunch time training sessions and then the event on Thursday. It was really good to see that everything went smoothly and I sent the completed papers off to the University of Leeds on Thursday afternoon. The challenge was 90 minutes long and we had 35 students participating. I think one of the students may have out-scored me, which is indicative of his ability! I'm sure he'll get a certificate and be passed on to the more advanced rounds.
This was a really tiring week with all this extra stuff going on as well as teaching, prep work, reports, and marking. But it was profitable and I feel like I will be more ready for organising the next Maths Challenge. Working with gifted students is really what I love and I hope my career will continue in this sort of vein.
No comments:
Post a Comment