Louise St-Pierre
AHT Mathematics, The Cumberland Community School
Maths curriculum booklets, structure and beauty
“Explicit teaching does not just mean careful explanations, or clear descriptions of step-by-step procedures, but includes structured practice materials which have often been designed and evaluated by expert teams, incorporating both conceptual and procedural aspects of knowledge. These approaches may take the form of at least partially scripted lessons and usually involve feedback.”
JEREMY HODGEN, professor of mathematics education, UCL Institute of Education
‘Excellence is in the details. Give attention to the details and excellence will come’
Perry Paxton
The three Maths teams across the trust have been working tirelessly to create booklets to streamline our approach to learning. There have been multiple drafts, with input from all teachers, to produce these differentiated resources for students based on their individual pathways.
Although I am sure everyone in teaching will agree a resource printed in colour automatically takes on a level of beauty, the real beauty of these booklets is in the intricate detail that has gone into them. The booklets use EDI (Explicit Direct Instruction) and the questions specifically address student misconceptions.
Phases of Explicit Direct Instruction
Starter
We expect all our starters to be explicitly linked to previously taught key objectives. This is to ensure frequent recalling of what was previously taught in order to support students retaining their previous learning.
Helpful hints
One key feature of our booklet is the helpful hints it provides to both students and teachers-blue column on the right-hand side.
Misconceptions
We have intentionally highlighted questions with ‘*’ to denote a typical question riddled with misconception.
At The Cumberland Community School, our teachers will use live marking to focus on these misconceptions to ensure student mastery, while the booklets also contain student hints to enable independent self-correction. These vital learning moments will be workshopped in CPD sessions prior to teaching to maximise the booklets’ impact.
Numeracy is a crucial part of the whole school vision and the booklet contains specific lessons dedicated to core skills. We wanted to share our passion for Maths with our students so included Maths Fascination pieces to grab students’ attention.
Plenary
We deliberately revisit learning during the plenary by using the DPR KO/Class view.
It allows the teachers to both assess learning as well as celebrate students' achievement. It’s a real pleasure to witness students demonstrating their understanding, and when teachers make live judgement through the DPR, students celebrate. Notice that the colour of the three circles is not in a logical order?
Having been able to walk through the corridor and see a whole team teaching from the relevant booklet, I know that there is beauty in unity. Even if marching soldiers break stride on a bridge, in the Maths team we will continue to march in time across the bridge, breaking down barriers and misconceptions on the road to student success.
Related readings:
1. Numeracy: what is it good for? accounts of how we improved our Mathematics curriculum (part 6)
2. All Maths is Beautiful: accounts of how we improved our Mathematics curriculum (part 5)
3. Memory in Maths: accounts of how we improved our Mathematics curriculum (part 4)
4. Visualising Mathematics Sequencing: accounts of how we improved our Mathematics curriculum (part 3)
5. Mathematical fascination: accounts of how we improved our Mathematics curriculum (part 2)
6. When maths did not add up: accounts of how we improved our Mathematics curriculum (Part 1)
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