Susan Connor: Bean Primary School.

• It is easy to differentiate activities such as constructing multiplication tables. Less able could work on 2 times, more able on 13 times. Nobody felt excluded.
• Children were able to use cell references and grid references with ease afterwards.
• The novelty was a motivating factor. Children hadn't done work like this before.
• We were able to cover old ground in a 'face saving' new format. Even when they were aware they should already know something, they could explore the concepts without fear of appearing foolish.

Other possible benefits

• When children all start at the same point, there are no preconceptions about each other's abilities. Everybody is therefore prepared to have a go.
• The work on spreadsheet layout may improve abilities to use and read tables of all kinds.

• We have raced on with a different spreadsheet project each week without feeling that we have covered the key objectives in enough depth.
• Building in time for practice, consolidation and revision has been difficult.
• Next time I would take one spreadsheet challenge over 2 or 3 sessions, to ensure the pupils covered it adequately.

• The data projector enabled very easy and thorough recapping of the previous lessons. This is a major advantage. Recapping the key points of the previous lessons is vital.
• The correct terminology needs to be used consistently.

I structured all my lessons along these lines:

• Whole class revision / recap of previous activities and learning points
• Whole class teaching of the next objective
• Setting a challenge for them to work on individually or in small groups. Two groups could use the available computers the rest worked on paper. While they got on with this I was able to support those who need help or talk to pupils / groups to find out the thought processes being used.
• If a general problem arose the class was stopped and the problem was explained, then they carried on.
• The last part of the lesson the pupils shared with the rest of the class their answers to the problem and other issues that had arisen were explained.
• Finally I summarised the key points of the lesson.

Managing learning

I found it hard to find time for practice and consolidation. This is however an issue in all curriculum areas at the moment as curriculum time pressures are extreme. As the activities revolved around a computer screen, it was fairly easy to get couples to work on the activities during odd moments during the day. All the activities were suitable for 10 -15 minutes' pupil revisit. They did not need much teacher input, as they were keen to work out and remember themselves. If there was a problem that they couldn't solve it was nice to send another child to help.

Activities that worked particularly well

• Making multiplication tables - this just took off, they loved it.
• Making function machines - as part of this they enjoyed setting a challenge for somebody else to work out what the formula was in the function machine by changing the input number.
• Constructing conversion tables e.g. mm - cm, cm - m, m - km, ml - l etc. The more able converted imperial to metric.
• Pocket money modelling challenge from RM Number Magic. This was enjoyed but the option 'C' needed a lot of teacher support. The less able managed options 'A' and 'B' without support.