When I first started teaching I took over the school’s Twitter account with the aim of posting puzzles and challenges for students. I quickly realised that not many students use Twitter, so I looked for another way to engage using social media. I set up an Instagram account, initially to share photos from a school trip to Paris, and this helped us to get a few followers!
I then began promoting our social media accounts in lessons and parents’ evenings so that I could start posing challenges and competitions, but I found it difficult to attract interest until I ran a competition with a class to design creative posters, and the quality and creativity blew me away so much that I wanted to show them off. I uploaded photos onto Instagram and the response was fantastic, students were engaging with their work outside of the lesson. I found that students loved having their work broadcast and I had them asking if their work could be posted so that others could see it. Now I also regularly take pictures during of students working hard during the lesson – some don’t like being on the pictures so I take a snap of their work instead.
I started following Matthew Burton on Twitter a few years ago – you may remember him as the English teacher from Channel 4’s Educating Yorkshire. One of the things I really liked was that he used #errantapostophewednesday where he would post pictures showing incorrect use of apostrophes, usually on shop signs, menus etc. I took inspiration from this to start #badmathsmonday after a trip to Tesco where I saw this ‘offer’:
Now I try to post a picture a week, sometimes spotting them myself, sometimes relying on the internet, and even sometimes having them submitted by students! So if you find any yourself, make sure you use the hashtag!
Gareth Evans Maths 