Go-To Guides

When I first starting teaching, I was given little else to aid my planning than a list of objectives from the National Curriculum and a number of weeks with which to cover the content. It’s safe to say that this was not enough to adequately prepare my students. Since then, I’ve been struggling to know the best way to prepare new teachers for all the things they need when approaching something for the first time. In an attempt to address this, the Go-To Guide was born.

Introducing the Go-To Guide

Inspired by the wonderful Pav Aujla (a Trust Lead for Science) who had produced booklets to share knowledge across multiple schools of what needed to be taught and when under the name of a Go-To Guide I thought I would give it a go for maths.

There are so many more things beyond just a list of objectives taken directly from the National Curriculum that are needed to prepare someone to teach content well to a group of students. These guides are not lessons but sit in the void between the curriculum and lesson delivery that sometimes does not get nearly as much attention as it deserves.

I will talk through one of the guides in detail here (the one for circle theorems), explain each section and show you what it contains. At the end I will include links to other completed examples and a blank template that contains notes on how to produce one from scratch.

Overview 1/7

Despite my earlier grievance, the guides do start by outlining the content from the curriculum that is going to be covered. It then translates this into actual English and makes any relevant links to past and future content both and any other relevant subject areas.

Topic Familiarisation 2/7

Teachers are expected to complete the Topic Familiarisation section themselves (there will be about 5-7 questions). There are some guiding questions here as well for teachers to consider whilst they go through these. Questions like:

It then moves on to a section called “Topic Familiarisation”. This is designed to showcase some of the weird and wonderful ways that this content is assessed. It contains questions, mark scheme and any examiners notes. It should help direct the teaching to cover more than just a surface level understanding the topic. The caveat here is that teachers need to be aware that they do not teach the topic to ensure students can answer just these questions but rather questions of this type having never seen these before.

– What might my students struggle with?

– What gaps are there in my subject knowledge?

– What do I want a model answer to look like?

– How do I know what to do for each question? What are the clues?

Possible Models and Tips 3/7

By this point teachers should have a good idea of what needs teaching, i.e. their subject knowledge should be secure. This section is designed to upskill relevant pedagogical subject knowledge. Approaches to teaching, common misconceptions, and general tips are shared unique to this topic.

Key Words 4/7

This is a space for relevant tier 2 and 3 vocabulary to live and be defined. One of the biggest misconceptions I think teachers have here is the sheer quantity of words that people think are tier 3 (maths specific) but are actually tier 2 (in common usage in other domains). To this end, not only are they two put into distinct sections but other uses of the word are defined so that teachers can make explicit links to other times and places students may have encountered these words.

Topic History and Hinterland 5/7

This is a chance for all those rich stories that are sometimes hidden in mathematics to come to life. This section contains relevant stories that have contributed to this part of the curriculum. Where possible, this will help expose both teachers and students to the diverse and global endeavour that mathematics has been and help shine a light all the fantastic people and civilisations that have contributed to the subject we know today.

Possible Learning Sequence 6/7

This suggests a possible sequencing of how this content could be taught. Each section is not a lesson as this will need to vary from class to class, but there is an attempt to sequence it logically in a way that will be conducive to learning.

Resources 7/7

This last section contains a generic list to some tried and tested websites and a brief description of what they are (think Corbett, Geogebra, Nrich, Craig Barton’s websites…) but also contain specific resources that could be useful for this topic.

What Next?

The construction of these is currently an ongoing process. Some that have been made by myself are here and most are 90% complete. As a Trust we are trying to get full curriculum coverage and are prioritising those areas that either offer the most challenge from a subject knowledge point of view (circle theorems, advanced trigonometry…) or those that offer a particular challenge from a pedagogical subject knowledge stance (negative numbers, fractions…):

gtg-ks4h.11-circle-theoremsDownload

gtg-ks3.1-place-valueDownload

gtg-ks3.13-quadratics-and-graphsDownload

Template

Here is a blank template with written guidance for each section should you wish to make your own (feel free to delete all the branding surrounding it)

templateDownload

I hope some of this is useful to either yourself or colleagues. If it is, please feel free to share these around.

I’m always interested in what people make of this so please feel free to comment with thoughts, questions or incomplete musings. Follow this or my Twitter account Teach_Solutions for similar content in the future.