I’m just putting this out there … I really struggle with objectives, outcomes and success criteria in maths. Don’t even try to explain the differences to me … others have tried and it just ain’t sinking in. Over the last few years I’ve had lots of discussions about them, and seriously, I swear I was listening and even nodded occasionally but then 10 minutes later there is nothing. Nada! Nil! Zip! Zilch!  It’s not personal, it’s almost like I have a “Bermuda triangle” in my brain when the subject gets mentioned. Lets just take an example of why I just don’t “get it”:

Suppose I want to teach “factorising quadratics” surely my objective is “to be able to factorise a quadratic” and my success criteria is “to be able to factorise a quadratic” but then what is my learning outcome? … it’s bad enough that my objective and criteria are the same thing surely the outcomes can’t also be “to be able to factorise a quadratic”. So I’m being glib and I know that within that I can have quadratics with 2 negatives, 2 positives and mixed signs which could get me started going on about differentiated outcomes/objectives and criteria but I really don’t want to hide the terminology or the maths topic behind some fancy taxonomy. Maybe that’s the point: Maths is different from other subjects due to the fact that the same topic can be so easily made more difficult by “tweaking” very small variables, which to some people would be soooooo subtle that the intricacies are not seen.

I’m a very simple gal and I find that my lesson planning is accordingly simple. Once I’ve considered the broad overview of a series of lessons within our schemes of work I’ll consider the group and what I want them to achieve in a given lesson. Previously I would have started my planning by hand-writing my version of the 5 min plan (it turns out I’ve been doing them for most of my lessons this year so far .. maybe my lesson planning has become my security blanket?!?) and when I’m doing it I am always thinking in terms of “chunks” of knowledge and difficulty – no worksheets are put together  (or sourced as I really can’t make everything bespoke for every lesson) and no slides are made until I’ve got it sorted in my own head. Some of you will think that I am bonkers and am doing this all wrong but it’s just the way my brain works and we are all unique.

Lesson PlanToday I did a lesson on “angle facts” and my original idea for the lesson is shown in the image above – as a result of which I produced two worksheets both with a similar structure. One for angles on straight lines and the second relating to triangles including isosceles triangles. I wanted to focus on “working out” and so gave some scaffolding to remind students what I wanted to see in their books at points in the series of questions:

Angle Facts 1Angle Facts 2

Here are some links to the actual worksheets: Angle Facts 1 – Straight lines into triangles and Angle Facts 2 – Triangles including isosceles

And for those of you that asked for a copy my lesson planning template is here -> 5 min lesson plan – adapted

Angle FactsAdditionally I produced a powerpoint – I usually use Notebook but wanted a “today we are learning” scrolling throughout the lesson – I’m starting to try new stuff out again and felt that this phrase was a way of dodging the “outcome/objective/criteria” confusion that I have!  The slides were simple and much of the “sharing new information” bits of the lesson (think chalk, talk and whole class questioning) aren’t written down and much of the differentiation, stretch and challenge and even my AFL came from clever use of these worksheets. It does make me wonder if the same could be said about a textbook?

So there you go … a quick insight into the way my brain works when planning lessons!!

(NB: before you ask, yes for a formal obs I would still have to type up a “proper” lesson plan)