I have an extremely weak mathematician in my year nine class. On Thursday we we doing a team activity, where each member of two teams took it in turns to write the name of a shape on the board. The winning team being the one with the most shapes.

This little boy had to leave the classroom with the Teaching Assistant as he burst into tears. The TA told me later that he'd said to her: 'I don't know any shapes'. I try to avoid putting my pupils into a situation where they could be embarrassed by a lack of knowledge but I thought I'd be safe with asking them each for a shape.

Poor kid.