Phil Smith

@philwainsmith.bsky.social

Secondary maths teacher on a PGR hiatus. Dad, runner, rugby.

I'm starting a Core Maths course with Manu Kanpur's (original credit may be due elsewhere) classic goals/points productive failure task on variance. I've used plenty of guided inquiry before but this will be a first. Any thoughts, opinions, or experience on this? I'm working completely on theory.

If constrained to a single unit, what's a good (the best?) sequence for teaching fraction calculations? I'm coming around to: multiplying proper, equivalence and simplifying, add/subtract with same denominator, converting between improper and mixed, any multiply, any divide, any add/subtract.

Does anyone have any successful strategies, GCSE maths, with very low attaining y11 students? Weak numeracy and poor problem solving skills. Able to follow quite complex algorithms (S.E. for example) if repeated enough times, but fall apart at the slightest change of context.