I’ve started thinking about lesson planning. I know! (don’t hate me! I’m not saying it to make you feel guilty) but I have news that means I have to get ahead of the game and be super organised this year.

First the news … from September, myself and Seager are being seconded from our “day jobs” to the Maths team at Edexcel for one day a week each (for one year … it’s not a permanent thing BTW!) – I’m working with them every Wednesday and Seager is doing every Friday. Along with Pietro Tozzi (who continues his secondment with them) we’ll be available to support their collaborative network meetings up and down the country and basically anything else they ask us to do. I know Maria Hoather has already scheduled us in to support lots of meetings next term – if you don’t know about them or haven’t attended one yet and want to know where your local meeting is or to book your FREE place email Maths Emporium – > mathsemporium@pearson.com  stating where you’re located and I’m sure whoever is manning the email (fingers crossed) will be able to send you details of the date of your closest meeting (ours at Alcester is Friday October 14th 12noon until 3pm). Note that you don’t have to be an Edexcel centre to attend and they really are invaluable for getting key updates but also for networking with local colleagues.

What this means is that I’ll be sharing a couple of classes but our key groups are not affected due to some very clever timetabling. For the past couple of years our gaffer has allowed us out to do lots of “getting ready to teach” GCSE events and conferences etc but the difference this year is that it is a consistent day out a week. I’m excited and have no illusions that it’ll be tough at times and am genuinely excited. Nervous but excited!

Anyway, I’ve been asked a lot recently about our results and what “it is” that makes a difference and the only thing I know is that it isn’t just one thing. There is no panacea. There are lots of building blocks that each have an impact. One of them is to do with the teaching of specific topics in the run up to the exam, but also to do with how we teach. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the type of questions/examples we use in class and when the difficulty gets ramped up either in the examples or in the questions the kids work though and it go me thinking. Some background first: I know some wonderful teachers who are able to “wing it” and stand up in front of a class and just know how they’re going to teach a specific topic. By that I mean they can write a series of questions and know that they will give the correct answer but more importantly give the correct level of progression throughout the lesson so that the whole class examples they are using to illustrate a point either take the learning on or unearth some common misconceptions. Let me say: I’m not one of those teachers – of course there are times when “door handle” planning (you know! when you’re planning your lesson with your hand on the door handle as you walk into the class) comes into play, but luckily for me it’s not very often! (I must admit to twice having to check a students book to see what I taught them last lesson, as they were doing their bread and butter worksheet!) I’m rubbish at “winging” lessons, it inevitably leads to me choosing an example that doesn’t work very easily or the common misconceptions come out too soon and cause confusion (I want to control when they come across these if I can!). Choosing the questions for me that I either use to teach with or for the students to do as part of them doing some work is a MASSIVE part of planning lessons – the questions they do can be presented in so many different formats/activities to aid engagement but for me the worksheet/activity is just a “carrier” for the questions. Don’t get me wrong I know here is so much more to lesson planning (but I’m trying not to digress) and designing clever “carrier-activities” is a whole other topic – it’s not just a matter of collating questions willy-nilly!

Anyway, I love the power of twitter and I’ve been thinking about doing some form of “chase me/tag” (oh I don’t know how to describe it!) where at the start of each week I pose a “starting question” for a specific topic and then people can add the question/example and/or activity that they would follow this with and weekly I’d collate the “route map” through a topic from end to end. I think keeping it to one topic means that we should end up with a load of possible ideas and routes through a topic. It needs some structure putting together but in the short-term would love to know what people think. Let me know you thoughts or even elaborate on the initial idea in the comments below or mail me … mel@justmaths.co.uk