Created by a humble Maths teacher to support trainee, apprentice and early years teachers and the like plan consistently good lessons.
Nothing on this site is guaranteed to work but aims to give a wide variety of options, which hopefully gives teachers the chance to find what works for them.
In my opinion this needs to be a question in the back of any teachers mind whilst planning each section of a lesson.
Whilst every section of this could be considered contentious or debated this is a generalised plan I try to follow when planning from scratch. This doesn't mean this is the right way or wrong way but just a way of structuring a good lesson.
Here I considered putting a nice diagram with a scale showing how long you should spend on each stage of a lesson but who knows how long each will take? Who am I to define the length of a lesson or a topic; how long does it take learners to understand and 'learn' a skill? Dependant on the level of autonomy you have this may differ, there are too many factors to weigh up when deciding the time scale for each section of a lesson. It is also important to note it is unlikely every topic will take exactly an hour to 'learn'. I am writing learn like that because again how do we show that something has been learnt? That itself is difficult within a lesson (we can show learners can perform but that doesn't advocate learning).
Just by reading the title of this section you can already tell this is a contentious topic. Do we need a starter or an activity on the board as learners come into the room? I don't have the answer unfortunately, there is too many variables in my opinion from whole school/college policies to personal preference and the need to cover content.
Some places you may find said starters are:
I don't think I have seen an education establishment that doesn't use some kind of lesson objective. Personally I'm not a big fan for Maths lessons but like a lot of things in education this is a hot topic for debate.
No suggestions here just a note to make sure you include them, follow any policy you have and use that format.
In maths modelling and examples tend to come together it would be difficult to separate the two. This should be the main teaching phase of a lesson where and idea/topic is explored and new knowledge is shown to learners. This could well be a pre-prepared sequence of questions that you have created yourself and go through on the board.
Here's a few places you could get resources to support this phase:
At this point whilst you would have done this through questioning already, it is important to know if learners can recall what you want them to. Dependant on class size etc this could be done in a number of ways such as electronically, using whiteboards and/or a raising of hands or another voting system. I like to use a lot of multiple choice questions here with embedded common misconceptions, this then raises interesting discussion points.
Some places you could find resource to help you assess the learning of individuals or groups:
So far you have shown learners how to do something and maybe got them to try a few examples of their own. You have also found a way to assess their performance (not learning). At this point you either want to go back to the modelling/example stage or move onto a fluency/bulk practice phase. Here is where students are practicing what they have just done. This does not have to be 20 questions on the same topic but might be a few selected questions that deepen the understanding and give learners time to embed the skill further.
Sometimes you will want to bulk practice here others you will want to increase understanding through interesting problems:
At some point in the 'learning' of a topic you want to increase the challenge and show learners the end goal, this might not happen every lesson. This might be a complex problem or and exam style question they could complete. At this point the learners have some fluency with the skill and can repeat the method well. To further embed the understanding you would push the learner outside of their comfort zone with problem solving skills etc.
As a mathematician these are often the fun parts to a lesson but don't rush to get here learners need the basics to be able to solve new problems: