Sometimes I love my job so much. I gave my senior class a "Mathography - your Maths Autobiography" assignment, and their answers are so honest and sincere. It's really awesome. Sometimes I feel that maths misses the opportunities that other teachers (like English or Social Science) get to really know our students.

The instructions I gave them were:
Create a mathography to describe your experiences with Mathematics so far - you should include:
Personal Introduction
My experience with Mathematics so far
include - Memories
- What I liked or disliked
- What helps me learn (teaching styles / technology)
How I think I will use mathematics after school - think about the career you want to have.
What I wish my teacher knew about me.
#MathsTeaching #Mathematics #Teaching

(Edited for spelling 🤦‍♀️)

New Blog 🌟

(Slightly) Re-thinking the example-problem pair

https://sketchcpd.com/viewBlog?id=31

#MathsEdChat #MTBoS #MathsTeaching #MathsEducation #Pedagogy #MathEd #MathsEd

Posting on here definitely feels different and more like posting into the void...but I kind of like it. It's freeing not worrying about a post getting likes (favourites) or replies and just saying what I feel.

Today I've been thinking about autonomy in planning maths lessons. Prompted by many things but brought to the forefront by Craig Barton's blog this morning (Link below)

I'm trying to mentally wrestle with the idea that I have, in the past, disliked being told how to teach if it's too prescriptive...I hated the thought of some structures I'd seen in other schools such as compulsory 10 minute retrieval where the questions were pre-prepared by someone else.
But I also find myself wanting to dictate methods, approaches and sometimes even a whole series of lessons.
But the crucial thing here is that I think I was scarred by some particularly bad ideas. Whole-school T&L policies which were driven by subjects very different to maths. Perhaps this made me resistant to being told to do something.
Now that we know better (I hope), are there aspects that could be much more prescribed?
And could there potentially be more creativity that comes from this? If we give teachers time back with the basics of lessons planned will there be more time for tweaking/adapting/thinking creatively about how to improve things?

https://open.substack.com/pub/eedi/p/how-prescriptive-should-a-head-of?r=38x5e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

#MathsEdChat #MTBoS #MathsEducation #TeachingMaths #MathsTeaching