What happened today?

Well the day began with rife speculation about exams. The last thing I want to do here is start a rumour!!!! We actually run two UK based GCSEs in our school and so the announcement from the UK government yesterday about cancelling summer exams is already going to have an effect. I, for one, am glad that I don't have to make any of these really tough decisions or those about the knock on effects. The IB line is still pretty clear and obviously, the default position is that school will remain closed for the time being, but exams are still going ahead. It isn't even really that fruitful to start imagining what might happen. It is of some personal relevance too. My eldest daughter is in her final IB year and due to sit exams in May..... we are keeping a level head about it.

It is Trivia Thursday with my tutor group on Thursdays and that works just fine over the internet. It was just a little delayed because I have a G10 (IGCSE year) tutor group and they had a few questions about heir exams... It is nice to check in first thing and having something to do like trivia thursday gives it a bit of focus and helps mark the start of the day. Just a few general knowledge questions and Teams does well for seeing who is first to react!

Grade 8 - Well, we have been working on regular polygons and angles and there are lots of rich activities to go with this topic like... Polygon Proofs, Polygons and Stars, and this 'angles and polygons' activity in the making that is also 'Scratch based' but in our meeting yesterday we discussed thinking about the balance regarding screen time and that reminded me of the joys of Islamic tile design and so I got my grade 8 students doing this today... and there were some fab results..

My google docs obsession...

I mentioned this on day 1, but I am definitely all googled up. I spent the rest of my day doing a combination of mathematics and ToK on shared google docs. I know we all have our preferences, but I see so many advantages to this in normal circumstances, but even more so now...

Maths Internal Assessments - OK, so I am working on Maths studies for now, but will definitely be adapting this for the new apps course. I have set up a whole bunch of templates and discussed my whole sytem here but here are some of the key advantages..

• I have a google sheet as a summary with links to the individual files next to the students names for quick and easy access.
• Working documents are shared between me and the individual students.
• Keeping working documents avoids the who multiple version problem
• I write feedback on the live document and they get as it comes
• There is a whole history of development and my comments stay until they are dealt with
• Everyting is all in 1 place that I can get to from any computer any time - likewise for them

And all this comes in to its own in the current environment. I just had a one to one teams call with a student while we were both looking at their live document and making changes. 

ToK - So I have a very similar set up for this as well. What I really like is that all work is seen as 'in progress' Rather than hand in an essay as a word file and upload to a VLE where I write comments that get seen once and then lost in the weekend, all of this here to stay and be looked at. My ToK students have 1 document where all their written asisgnments go, separated by headings that make the document easy to navigate. Actually much more like an old fashioned exercise book but with all the digital advantages. Highly recommended.

Another first!

I actually have a blister developing on my mouse finger..... time to stop....