So I’ve fallen out of the habit of posting my random thoughts on here … life is busier than it’s ever been but I’m feeling like I’m slowly getting into a routine with all the stuff that’s going on and it feels like as good a time as any to get back into this on a more regular basis.

Anyway, this evening myself, Seager and Fize met virtually, like we do most Monday nights with the KangaBoys (Matt and Steve from Kangaroo Maths) … the five of us, even have a “band name” … collectively we’re “JustaRoo” and it’s with this hat on that we work together on our series of revision guides / workbooks. It feels like we’ve been doing this forever and whilst the output isn’t at the same scale of large publishers we’re pretty proud of what we’ve produced so far but there is more to come. The current project is two guide/workbooks (not sure what to call these!) for key stage 3 … they are the transition from our key stage SATs book to the one for the “crossover” content at GCSE. We’re plugging away at it and the end is in sight of the writing part of book 1 …. It takes so long. Every single sentence is discussed, every single question and the progression within a series of questions is the subject of long conversations and this evening was no different … Steve used the phrase “Why this? Why now?” and it got me thinking as to how this should be our mantra as teachers at so many levels.

At a department level, when it comes to the curriculum, why are we teaching a specific topic and why now? If it makes no sense then change it. If the students aren’t at the stage where they’re ready for an advanced topic then don’t teach it, prepare them for it then come back to it. I’ll come back to sequencing a curriculum in maths in another post as I suspect there is lots I have to say on it and this post is just me giving myself a bit of a blogging kick up the bum.

As teacher, once the sequencing is sorted at a high level within the overall scheme of work, there will be the question of the order in which topic is broken down – we’ll all have views on this. Let me use an example here: this evening we were discussing where function machines would come within a series of “spreads” * and again the discussion came up about “Why this? Why now?”. When it comes to this thought process as a teacher, it’s all well and good to use a textbook (as long as it’s a decent one) to help you and over time as a practitioner you’ll learn which ones have done a half decent job of sequencing the order within a topic i.e. when do you introduce negative solutions in linear equations? What about writing the answers as a fraction? Negative fractions/decimals? But let me tell you, it really isn’t an easy job if it’s done correctly – when we have the discussions we all come at it from different angles and we bring with it our own perceptions and experiences … we do always come to a conclusion but also know that sometimes this involves one of us accepting something that is contrary to our experience. That’s ok though because that’s what’s making this work … we aren’t operating in an echo chamber of agreement and I genuinely believe that it makes what we are trying to produce all the better for it.

This mantra should also be a consideration when it comes to the questions we use in class. Again, hours of my life have come and gone in putting together sequences of actual questions whether they are the ones I use as my worked examples or the ones that I want students to work on. It really shouldn’t be a case of “more of the same” … each question IMO should move the students on a little … just a little … too much and you might lose the students … too little and they’ll not be exposed to the level of challenge that they need to get to. It’s a very fine balance getting it “just right”. In the realm of business and motivation, there’s a thing called “The Goldilocks Principle” that works on the ideas that we experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of our current abilities. Not too hard. Not too easy. Just right.

Anyway, I’m going to leave you with a little challenge … ask yourself the question “Why this? Why now?” at least once in the next week. Happy with the answer? If not what are you going to do about it?

Back soon

Mel

* Each sub topic is written over two pages that we call a “spread” that follow the same “Ready?” (the “how”) “Set?” (have a go at some procedural style questions) and Go! (apply what you know, reason and justify your answers .. basically tougher stuff!) format.