Over the last few years, I have been fortunate to observe thousands of maths lessons in schools across the UK and beyond. This website is my attempt to give back – to share what I have learned so that any teacher or department can take steps to improve their students’ outcomes.
This website is free and always will be. If you find my work useful, the best way to show your support is to purchase one of my 90-minute online workshops that you can share with colleagues at a CPD session or departmental meeting for no extra cost, or become a Patreon.
Making the most of this website
Habits and routines
- Supporting teacher change: How I observe a lesson and give feedback
- The power of an imaginary coach
- Supporting student change: Embedding habits and routines
Means of participation
- Participation ratio
- Front-load the means of participation
- Cold Call
- Mini-whiteboards
- Call and Respond
- Turn and Talk
Checking for understanding and responsive teaching
- Checking for listening
- Checking for understanding
- A model for responsive teaching
- Plan follow-up questions in advance
- Don’t round up
- Diagnostic questions
- Learner-Generated Examples
Phases of a lesson
- Lesson planning
- Learning Episode structures
- Do Now
- Purpose
- Atomisation
- I Do
- We Do
- Maximising the participation ratio during independent practice
- Consolidation
- Purposeful Practice
- Problem-solving
Memory and retrieval
- Desirable difficulties and four key retrieval opportunities
- Getting students on board with retrieval
- The role of confidence in learning
- Low-Stakes Quiz
- Homework
- Whole-class feedback
- Walking-Talking mock exams
Things for heads of department and senior leaders to think about
- How prescriptive should a Head of Department be?
- Premortem: The key to ensuring to change sticks?
- The myth of copying things down
- Correcting in green pen does not work
- I’d also recommend listening to this conversation with two experienced Heads of Maths, and this conversation with Jo Morgan
