Not having my own room, I move around the school to teach my lessons. Whilst this may be a challenge or even annoying in your usual school, this certainly isn’t the case at Bushey Meads. One such example is teaching my Year 10 maths class in Miss Timmins’ room. In line with the continued school drive to embed a culture of stretch and challenge and really push our High Prior Achievers to reach their potential, every classroom has an ‘Are you up for the challenge’ poster. Our teachers are getting creative by surrounding these posters with enriching, stretch and challenge activities. As shown in the picture, Miss Timmins has created an eye catching display from which students are able to pick out key stage and level specific maths exam style questions.

My Year 10 students were very keen to be able to get involved and have a go at the challenge question cards. They were also partially driven by the new ‘It’s All About Attitude’ booklets, in which, to get an ATL 7, students have had to have voluntarily engaged with stretch and Challenge tasks. My students were studying circle theorems in the lesson, but with 15 minutes to go, a good number of them were working on composite functions independently!

Well done Miss Timmins for having a display that brings stretch and challenge to life – I’m very grateful and lucky to be teaching in your room. And the biggest winners, of course, are our students!