👨🏫 Teaching:
After such a great start to my week is had ended up being very stressful. I was in Exeter for an NCETM professional development lead course on Tuesday. It's great having face to face courses and being able to discuss ideas and thinking in person, I had two key moments that got me thinking:
1. Designing professional development (PD) programmes
It's obvious now I think about it, but when designing PD we need to think about what outcome do we want pupils to have? From here we can work backwards to 'in order to achieve this outcome, what must teachers change/adapt about their teaching practice?' Then finally, 'to achieve this change what should PD actually look like?' There's no point delivering PD because we think an idea is 'good' we need to be thinking about what outcomes we want to be seeing from pupils. This also then gives you a clear way of evaluating the effectiveness of your PD programme. So instead of just "I want to develop the use of bar modelling in my department" we need to think what outcome do I want to see e.g. "students having a deeper conceptual understanding of how to solve an equation". From here, bar modelling may then be the change you want to see in teaching. Just introducing it with no thought as to what outcome you want to see gives you nothing to check how well your PD has gone.
2. Representations to show the maths Vs representations to understand the maths
My second thinking point is about what we use representations for in maths. We discussed the idea of using representations to show the maths versus representations to understand the maths. It came from looking at an ICCAMS multiplication representation resource and we spoke about the need to show all of the representations and why it may or may not be useful. Generally in my teaching, representations are used to show what the abstract maths 'looks' like. I don't think I go the other way around and show lots of representations of the same thing and have students work out what is being shown themselves. I'm unsure about how effective it would be at the moment, I think potentially it would be more effective for higher attaining students who already have a good grasp of the maths rather than when first introducing a concept. Think I need to have a play around with it a bit more first. Definitely given me something to think about when I am using representations myself.
To finish the week my head of department and SLT link, who also teaches Maths, have both tested positive for COVID. So I can't wait to see how next week goes!! Wish me luck!!
🔊 Listen:
Episode 2 of Bags to Learn podcast with Naveen Rizvi. Gave me lots to think about and try to implement into my own department. Definitely useful for when I eventually become a HOD. Listen to it here.
🔊 Listen:
General Stanley speaking to Chris Williamson on the Modern Wisdom podcast. They talk risk, communication, careful and clear planning, training for bad situations, adaptability. Listen here.
🔊 Listen:
High performance podcast with Alistair Campbell, politician and author of Winners. In this podcast episode, Campbell talks about his own mental health struggles while working in politics and discusses his three favourite letters, OST. Listen to it here.
📚 Read:
Adam Robbins blogs about whole class feedback. Is a great read about how we can websites it is effective and not just another fad. Read it here.
📚 Read:
Helen Skelton talking about her bad habits and how she's overcoming them. Some classic examples and it's always good hearing how teachers overcome their bad habits. Have a read here.