The Storeroom Blog

#teacher5adaysketch - Film or book

18/2/2016

Post 18/29 in the Staffrm #29daysofwriting challenge: Sketch from a film or a book

I apologise in advance for this - I've just done it in the only half-hour I have spare all day. All morning and most of the afternoon was spent in the garden, painting the outside of the house and both front and back doors, and husband and I are off to games night at a friend's in about 40 minutes.

#teacher5adaysketch - Choose a piece of art

17/2/2016

Post 17/29 in the Staffrm #29daysofwriting challenge: Choose a piece of art

Today's prompt was "choose a piece of art with one idea of you might use it in the classroom". As a maths teacher, I've predictably picked my favourite piece of artwork by M.C. Escher - when I was little, someone bought me a postcard book of his work, and I still have the postcards in my display folder.

A few years ago, I got a jigsaw puzzle of this monstrosity:

Cuisenaire rods for algebraic expressions

16/2/2016

I've spent quite a bit of time so far over half term working on the resource areas of my site - one topic I was keen to get a few more resources for was writing algebraic expressions and using correct algebraic notation, as I'm teaching this to Year 7 after half term and my collection was looking a little sparse.

Today I'd also found a link to the Cuisenaire Rods manipulative on the NRich site, which is absolutely fantastic. I remember discovering a dusty old box of rods in the resource cupboard during my NQT year, digging them out and then not really doing anything relevant with them because I didn't have a) the time or b) the experience to work out how to use them without just confusing the pupils more. I'd always been determined to go back and check them out properly though, particularly with the links to the work I've been doing with algebra tiles.

#teacher5adaysketch - My school shoes

16/2/2016

Post 16/29 in the Staffrm #29daysofwriting challenge: My school shoes

So today's prompt is "sketch your favourite pair of school shoes". This was pretty easy, as I only have one pair. I can't stand wearing heels at school, so flats are my go-to. They are a little boring, but very comfortable - let's save the giraffe-esque sandals for the weekend, eh?

#teacher5adaysketch - My hobbies

15/2/2016

Post 15/29 in the Staffrm #29daysofwriting challenge: My hobbies

As half term is an opportunity to relax, I thought I'd do something different this week - having seen the #teacher5adaysketch challenge on Twitter, I cracked out my sketchbook and pencils to draw "my hobby".

Love is in the air!

14/2/2016

Post 14/29 in the Staffrm #29daysofwriting challenge: Sentimentality and graph of a heart

When I was younger, I was ridiculously cynical about Valentine's Day - I'd wonder why people needed one special day to tell or show their significant other how much they love them, when surely that should be happening all the time. However, as I'm often working late into the evenings (I get in at 4pm but usually do 2-3 hours at home in the evening), sometimes I find my husband's come in at 5 and I've not even acknowledged him, because I'm so engrossed in school-work. It's very easy to neglect to remind the people who are important to you just how important they are - family and friends as well as significant others.

Circular thinking

13/2/2016

Post 13/29 in the Staffrm #29daysofwriting challenge: Naming the parts of a circle

It's another short(ish) post today because I'm trying to make the most of my first weekend of half term and also because I've done something weird to one of my fingers and typing/clicking is really painful today (fortunately, this also puts paid to any idea that I'll be marking books later).

Following my post yesterday about integers, I got the following Twitter comment: