Maths teachers give me 5 mins...please

[Doowrah]

I am a primary teacher with a much needed interview. I have to teach higher ability YR5/6 'Real Life' money word problems...I guess I would be looking at Yr7/8 to really cover them. Have you get any ideas, top tips, things to avoid etc of what I could do or pertinent questions I could ask at interview? I would be eternally grateful...I really need this job!

. y6 DD is being pushed hard in maths, I will try to come back later.

Some ideas:

eg fruit juice comes in 3 sizes
125ml for $1.50, 200ml for $2.40, 350ml for $4.10, which is the better value?

eg working out holiday prices for a given week with a given number of adults and children from a whole lot of data- using real holiday websites or brochures

eg converting pounds to Euros or dollars or whatever using a conversion rate

eg work out total meal costs from a restaurant meal, including VAT at 20%

problems to look for- when using calculators writing $3.4 instead of $3.40, or confusing pence per gram with grams per pence and hence making the wrong conclusion when comparing prices.

I would find out what higher ability actually means. What levels.?

Then I would look for sats past papers available online and pick out some problems to use or adapt. Then you will know you are covering the right stuff.

Questions you might want to ask at the interview will depend on the amount of information sent out and what you gather touring the school.

I would be interested in: the schools base line testing, tracking, provision for G&T and SEN, setting, resources, reporting, year group planning, numbers on free school meals, homework policy, CCAs available and teachers' commitments to them, destinations of students when they leave.

Going round I would be looking at display boards, resources, security, behaviour, cleanliness of the premises, state of the loos. Are the children proud of the school? Are the staff?

You can't really ask about teacher turnover but could ask those you meet informally how long they have worked at the school.

I would definitely mention a very important and little understood concept of great relevance to people's everyday lives, namely compound interest.

For example you borrow £100 at an annual percentage rate of 20% How much do you owe after 5 years?

I would try to make sure that all questions can be done "easily" without a calculator. I don't think the pupils will have access to calculators, so keep that in mind (or you can phone the school and ask about this).

Compound interest: I think it's too advanced, even for higher abilities.

If you have time, try to come up with questions that might interest the children: for ex. "Which one gives the better value: 2 for 3 PS£ games for £ XXX, or 2 games for £ YYY with a discount of 20 %, or 2 games (each is £ ZZZ) buy one get one 1/2 price?

You could also maybe find a shopping catalog, and get inspiration from it.

Or, you could devise an activity where they have to plan a trip. You give them 3 options (3 places), some prices (transport by train/bus/etc), ticket prices (for ex. to Legoland? Roller Coasters?) for a child, for an adult, then maybe say every fifth ticket is free... , food costs £ xxx etc etc. You can make it easy or hard (with discounts etc.)
Then they have to decide which option they would choose and justify it.

Good luck!

DD has just looked totally confused about compound interest. I suppose she could learn that. .

Real life learning at the moment is all about fractions, which easily relates to percentages and decimals.

Real life problems: accounting, calculating how much they pay back on a loan with even simple interest would be very eye-opening. Start with a simple advertised loan % deal. Or the odds of winning the lottery from buying a single ticket. Also, work thru a budget, money coming in and money coming out, what is left. Either for a household or for a trip as suggested.

and inflation!

Also shopping comparisons, like someone said above. If you buy a bag of flour for £1 or using a BOGOF offer, buy 2 bags of 500g for 80p, which is the better deal? But what about deal of 20 kg of rice for £10 versus 200 gram bag of rice for £1. One deal is obviously more rice per £1, but (commonsense) who is going to eat 20kg of rice before it goes off?

Martin Lewis has a whole lot of ideas about better financial literacy.

Cooking, imagine scaling up a recipe that is supposed to feed 5 people so as to feed 25. And then calculate how many calories are in the resulting dish. :)

DS is in y8 and they are doing things like very simple algebra, exponents, (ie x2 * x3 = ?) and scientific real life math problems.

You could cover things the difference between precision & accuracy.

Mind, the person who said just consult the SATs paper was probably right :(.

Find out their levels, first of all. Higher ability could mean "some level fours" or it could mean "50% working at 5a".
I think I would do a 5 minute starter introducing the mnemonic "RUCSAC" Read, Underline (the key info) Calculate, Solve, Answer, Check.
Give them a variety of word problems or let them pick from an envelope full of red problems, orange problems or green ones, depending on confidence. Then ask them to solve by using RUCSAC. Stress the need for annotation.

Take in apples, oranges and pears, take in some scales.

These are bought by the shopkeeper (students) for a price per Kilo.

The shopkeepers is going to sell then as individual pieces and needs to make a profit of 10p per piece of fruit.

Put them in groups (or one group if there are only a few) and ask them how they can solve this, then guide them through it.

How much have you paid for each bag of fruit?
How much is that per piece - you can discuss average or individual prices and put a bit of time in there - depending on the group.

At the end they get to keep the fruit

Loving these ideas folks...thanks so much for taking the time to help. I found out the level range is 3b-5b which isn't as high as I thought it could be! Sash, yer activity is fab, sadly the task stresses word problems. Stuffez yer warmer is great I am definately having that there and theweekendisnear and IIjkk your on my page with the shopping comparison idea. Thought I'd go for xbox,scooter,ipods,phones discounts/increases, offers etc; still abit concerned about actual figures to use but will peruse SATs papers online and does anybody know the important next steps to cover from this?

All the sats papers are available online, it might be an idea to have a range of problems available for the children, say level 3 questions mounted onto red, 4 onto orange and 5 onto green or similar. Perhaps not those colours because of the connotations.

For anyone interested...I didn't get it. Good feedback, think it went to a long term supply person. Only a week of my life wasted not to mention the tenner in petrol and £15 on printing.

Big thanks to you all for trying to help me tho'.....onwards and upwards...

Sorry to hear that Doowrah. I wonder if you can ask for travel expenses? I work at a university and we regularly pay these for interviewees (although it's mainly those who don't get the post who bother to ask). Obviously this may be different at schools.

Doowrah, just think of it as a practice for the next interview.

Before finaling getting a teaching job, I went to 3 interviews and was unsuccessful. When I got feedback such as: "You were a close second, etc etc " I thought they were just trying to be nice, without actually telling me what I should improve. After the third interview I got really useful feedback (the interviewer was Greek, not British, so he maybe he didn't mind about telling me, very clearly, what i was doing doing wrongly). Well at the following interview (which was the day after I got that feedback), I changed my lesson following the Greek guy's suggestions. I got the job!!! And it was in the best place ever - it was my dream job (too bad that after 2 years I had to leave it because my husband got a job offer far away and the whole family moved - I still think of how much I used to love getting up in the morning to go to work).

Oh, and every time I was going to job interviews, I had to pay for that day's childcare - which was around £ 30 ... so I know how you feel.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that maybe the perfect job for you was not this one, but it will arrive soon.

Doowrah, Dootell, what was it you were dooing wrong so others could perhaps benefit?

at alan

While laughing at alan I forgot to say I am sorry you didn't get the job Doowrah and wishing you better luck next time.

Alan...have you been at the Christmas sherry??

Only joking!!! My main mistake was going for two jobs at the same school on the same day....won't be doing that again!!!

My KS2 maths lesson was sound and worked well but I had thought their ability would be higher than it turned out to be. Mainly because my own son is a Level 5b for maths but their Level 5's didn't seem as up to it altho' that could have been me....to be fair I was only with them for 20 mins. But it is very difficult to plan for universal levels when in real life they are not.

My KS1 literacy lesson was unusually safe and lacking in creativity, mainly because I was stretched planning for two interviews. Definately, would change this for next time. Mind you I've been uber creative before and been told to be more formalised....so am feeling like I cannot win...sure this will pass.

Refreshing my Writing App familiarity really helped with the extra task which I was told I did well in. Basic teaching, classroom management, manner with children was all deemed to be good.

Hope this helps someone to doo well!