The Sixty-Second Republic - Pop da pop pop, the beat don't stop until the break of term

[StaffRepFeistyClub]

You are most welcome to this school staff support thread to get us through stressful times. It is meant for school staff only – a sort of room of requirement for school staff to let off steam.

Baiters, haters, goaders, and bashers can jog on somewhere else.

If you are NOT staff and just have a general education query please start your own thread.

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What are the other numbers’ personalities? I agree, 4 is very sensible. I think 2 is a nit of a show off.

I love fractions, too (not a mathematician!)

Yes but you could just divide the cake into three - you wouldn't need to go to decimals.

Yes to algebra that makes sense and to theoretical numbers and proportions.

I was just trying to think where in real life applications they were indispensable.

@DollyMixtureLulus

What are the other numbers’ personalities? I agree, 4 is very sensible. I think 2 is a nit of a show off.

Yes!

(You are a sister of the heart, clearly.)

3 is the maverick.

It’s getting weird on here

@TheHoneyBadger

3 is the maverick.

Yes.

You have to keep an eye on 3.

Never, ever try and put '3' in their place by asking them to come up to the front and take the lesson, since they don't seem to need to listen.

I have to say that I have never thought of numbers as having personalities lol. I love fractions. I'm slowly training my year 12s to love them too (mainly by dramatic screeching when they try to give me a horrid decimal as an answer when I could have a beautiful fraction instead).

I'm going to show my age here but I remember watching Playschool in the late 60s and learning to tell the time from the clock on that.
I would have been under 4 I think.

Yes but you could just divide the cake into three - you wouldn't need to go to decimals.

That’s the point. A straightforward fraction suffices. But people think they’re not mathematical enough and feel obliged to convert them into decimals or percentages (but can’t remember how to do it, so defeating the object).
The correct name for what are generally called “fractions” is rational numbers (the “rational” bit referring to ratio). Technically we should refer to a number such as 0.5 as a decimal fraction rather than just a decimal.
I’ve fairly recently had someone argue with me that fractions are not actually numbers at all (because not whole numbers). It turned out that his problem was that “there would be too many of them” which showed a strange combination of a lot of insight but a lack of understanding.

Fractions are a beautiful way to express recurring numbers.

7 is the most random number, never quite sure what he's going to do. 10 is a proper steady Eddie.

@noblegiraffe

Yes, the problem with inclusion is that someone decided that kids with difficulties should be in mainstream education and that was the end of it. No support, no training, no consideration given to what should happen if mainstream education isn't suitable. And definitely no consideration given to the impact on the education of the kids in the class. It is all very well saying kids need to learn to tolerate differences but they are there to learn and it is hard to learn when someone in the room is kicking off because they can't cope with being in the classroom.

This. And nobody actually seems to have considered whether being in a class of 30 with a ton of distractions and triggers is the best thing for them either.

I suspect there's a lot of children with an ASD/ADHD diagnosis in primaries that would be much better served by smaller, quieter classrooms. I suspect quite a few children are already in fight/flight mode by the time the first lesson starts and I don't believe that with a 1:30 ratio + maybe a TA, you've got time to talk them down from that and still teach everyone.

number 65 some city gentleman with bowler hat and rolled umbrella who doesn't like to stay away from his prime divisor 13 who is a goblin-like creature, supple and lightning-quick in his moves.

the number 8191 a man wearing French gamin with a gauloise cigarette hanging from his lips

Not my ideas, btw, but it sounds like some of you would enjoy Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Conjecture by Apostolos Doxiadis, one of my favourite books and in the unusual genre of mathematical fiction.

www.amazon.co.uk/Petros-Goldbachs-Conjecture-Apostolos-Doxiadis/dp/0571205119/ref=nodl_?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

Yes, Herc, totally agree with 10. I see 7 as mysterious - but random is accurate, too.

How funny that there is this overlap of opinions ...

Re. Inclusion ...

It just makes my heart drop, really.

I've realised the debate is polarised on Twitter and I just avoid it.
Polarisation leaves the (nuanced) truth in the middle, often ignored.
I mean, common-sense tells you that in our under-funded education system we are unlikely to see anything like real inclusion and that what we have is not great.

A game for cat

Wow, noble!

That's stunning.

The things you link to on these threads are just amazing. Your bookmark function is surely a library of wonder.

And the cartoon.

I can think of two people I need to send that to. They'll love it. ❤️💐

@MsAwesomeDragon

I have to say that I have never thought of numbers as having personalities lol. I love fractions. I'm slowly training my year 12s to love them too (mainly by dramatic screeching when they try to give me a horrid decimal as an answer when I could have a beautiful fraction instead).

Horrible decimals instead of fractions or ratios is how we ended up in a mess at work. 'Young people like decimals' is no excuse IMHO.

I'm not surprised about the survey about analogue clocks. I don't have one, I'm not sure I see the need to have one. But it is one of those things that unless it's taught outside school, I don't see kids retaining the skill these days. More and more clocks are digital.

I sat in a lesson about stem and leaf diagrams the other day. I still don't know what they're for.

At the risk of being tedious, two more observations from teaching adults:

• I’ve been asked better - more imaginative, more insightful - questions about Maths by apprentices (particularly plumbing apprentices, I’m not sure why) than I was ever asked by A level Maths students in school.
• The bitterness with which many people recall being put in bottom sets with so many disruptive elements (for a variety of reasons) who took up all the teacher’s time and made it impossible to learn was a recurrent theme.

See I'm more letters than numbers. I instantly make words from the letters on number plates and give myself extra points for really long words.

I think there's a bit of a thing about bottom sets for people who were in them in general, born. I don't know if there's a way round it. I don't think mixed ability being in a class with people who quickly grasp the stuff you are struggling with helps much either.

We have a habit of putting the least qualified person in the bottom sets. Like the PE teacher in maths, for example.
I always think the weakest kids need the best teacher... but what do I know?!

MrsH We do shit like that. And the least qualified on ks3, storing up issues for ks4.

Well, after a week or so of increasing cases in our county mainly staying by the coast, tonight we hear a confirmed positive from our local secondary, in Year 9. Siblings of those isolating as close contact in 4/7 of our classes, including mine.

I realise that this is nothing compared to what some of you have been seeing, but as we’ve been such a low case area for so long it’s surely an indication that Delta is spreading fast.

(Also am half shitting myself about having to start mat leave early, as HT has previously said that she’d want me at at home if it all kicked off again in school like it did in December - cannot afford for me to be off before August. Let’s hope this is an isolated case 🤞🏼)