Another day, another dollar (not)

2R – yet another truncated lesson thanks to the Remembrance Day assembly, though given the subject of the assembly, perhaps I shouldn't complain too much. So in the half hour available, I did a quick recap of multiplying and dividing fractions and set them off on the remainder of the Topic in Nutshell questions. I took the view that's I'd already covered conversion of top heavy fractions in the previous three lessons and wasn't going to do it again for the whole class – so I put the explanation of the stages needed to do it up on the smartboard and told them to refer to that before asking me about it.
Some of them still don't get fractions or any part of them (ho, ho). Either I'm explaining everything badly (which the class teacher assures me is not the case) or they don't pay any attention (which is possible I suppose) or their minds are incapable of grasping even the tiniest element for longer than 30 seconds. How else can you explain a number of pupils asking “How do I do this?” about the first question, every single time? I'll be fascinated to see how they get on with their end of unit test on Friday. I reckon there's about six who will fly through it, five who will struggle to get anything much right and the rest somewhere in the middle.
On a positive note, the two serial disrupters were on very good behaviour (though they are both on behaviour cards for the week) even if they could have done more work.
Note to self: need to emphasise H&S issue with the laptop – someone tripped over the cable on the way out, parting it at the transformer. Should put the laptop on the back table before dismissing.
3B – a better effort. Kept it simple. Kept them at it. Kept in focus. Can't give the beggars an inch....
1C – effective enough I suppose, if lacking in imagination. They can all cope with it but some are quicker than others. I need to think of some ways to better stimulate them.