Critical friends are awesome!...

Last term I videoed myself taking the maths lesson I blogged about in my previous post. The purpose behind this lesson was help my students to grow their maths language, and the purpose for my video was so I could see the explicit teaching strategies I use in a maths lesson. It's always a challenge to critique your own practice as there is no opportunity for the conversations that can affect change through both affirmation and guidance. I invited Donna Ryan, one of our Across School CoL teachers, to be my critical friend. Together we reviewed this lesson and identified the strategies I use to help my learners strengthen their connections to and make sense of our learning.

When introducing new learning valuing the power of front loading helps our learners avoid disconnects between what they already know and what they are about to learn. I captured 14 minutes 36 seconds of footage, with 6 minutes 55 seconds at the start given to helping my learners make the very important personal connections to the content they need if they are to be able to draw on and use their prior knowledge to help them make sense of new learning.

During this time we noticed I:

• use teacher think alouds to capture interest and evoke curiosity
• provide opportunities for paired discussion to make connections to the known, reflect on responses given, use the language in context and problem solve
• value and accept all responses
• share my own knowledge gaps and how I might fill these
• value students as experts
• ask questions
• use teacher tell opportunities when scaffolding with materials and images
• share the purpose of task
• remind/prompt known scaffold opportunities
• question
• give feedback
• initiate opportunities for negotiation
• remind students to value their own thinking
• revisit the same content in a variety of ways
• invite my learners to take risks in a supportive and collaborative environment
• give clear explanations
• use content vocabulary in context

On reflection I am quite surprised how many ways I find opportunities to help a wide variety of students make connections within a lesson. This was really affirming as it proves I know my learners, something that is vital to effective teaching, as one size really does not fit all.

Going forward I will definitely be making use of Donna's suggestion to include more opportunities for my focus group to practise using and hearing maths language in other learning areas to help them see that maths is not just something we do at maths time. I have asked Donna to come back later in the term to repeat this process so we can see if I have been successful in providing opportunities for practical challenges that bring maths language and learning into our Reading and STEAM lessons.