At NJS, we try to make maths as engaging as possible: exciting maths, real life maths, active maths and challenging maths. However, sometimes, children just like to pit their collaborative wits against a good-old-fashioned year 4 SAT’s paper (hard to believe I know). Here, we wheeled out the 2006 optional test paper – largely regarded as an ‘absolute classic’ featuring SAT’s stalwarts Lauren, Zak and Jade (see image above). Coincidently, it came to light recently that a member of our own staff team models his haircut, ‘relaxed stance’ and casual dress sense on one of the characters featured in the test (I’ll let you decide the character and teacher in question). Anyway, as part of our Crew’s challenge, each pair were given three counters that they could ‘cash in’ at any time and in doing so, ask a question to a staff member when the subject matter was just too difficult to navigate. Of course, most pairs opted against this and used the power of annotations, jottings and ‘math’s talk’ to help them arrive at the answer.
Following the activity, children swapped papers with another pair and pupils used the critique protocol to give each other praises and wonders regarding the effectiveness of their jottings. Of course, their feedback was sharp, at times bold and certainly tailored to meet the demands of the situation – just like Mr Wilkinson’s dress sense.
Have a great weekend everyone
