There are quite a few aspects of my teaching and my lesson structure that I would like to improve.
At #mathsconf13 in Sheffield last year Julia Smith (@tessmaths) spoke about the 5R’s lesson plan she used for her GCSE resit classes, breaking the lesson up into smaller ‘chunks’ in a bid to cover Routine skills, Recap on previous learning, Revise and Recall new topics and get exam Ready. The smaller parts of the lesson hopefully don’t give the students long enough to lose focus or become disengaged, which is a regular occurrence within my resit classes. The apathy and disinterest shown by many students really took me by surprise when I started teaching and I still struggle to ‘include and push every student’ when some are visibly extremely unhappy to be there and refuse to do anything other than the bare minimum, some refusing to do even that.
I have tried to implement parts of this into my lessons previously but have never kept them in place long enough for them to become established and expected parts of the lesson. This year I am resolved to set out a new lesson structure from day one and stick to it.
I have based this new structure on the 5R’s approach mentioned above and have tried to incorporate retrieval practice and independent/personalised study.
Routine – a form of retrieval practice, core skills will be tested at the start of every lesson using one of the following, depending on class level. JustMaths Bread & Butter, Corbett Maths 5 a day and Accessmaths Starting Six
Recap – a period of the lesson to practice retrieving prior knowledge from a previous lesson or a previous topic which links into the lessons main topic.
Revise & Recall – the main and longest part of each lesson will be a look at a new topic. Theoretically this should just be a revision session for a topic they have studied before, but that isn’t always the case and some students may need a more in depth look st the topic. For the recall, I plan to use a selection of exam questions on the topic
Ready – in recent mock exams, most students struggled to pick up marks in the A02 and A03 questions, the problem solving questions. To give students help and practice with these type of questions I have created this problem set, featuring fully scaffolded, partially scaffolded and un-scaffolded versions of questions from Edexcels gold, silver and bronze A03 question booklets.
As a college we have recently begun using pinpointlearning.co.uk (highly recommended) and all my students now have personalised booklets with questions and links for the topics on which they struggled on in the recent mock exams
I plan to alternate the use of these booklets and scaffolded problems at the end of each lesson, ensuring students get time on both each week.
Any feedback, criticism or advice on the above very welcome. Thank you for reading
w4ldom4ths 
Sounds good, the RECAP is an excellent idea to gauge how the previous topic has stuck with the class, may only take 10 mins but will also act as a good intro to the new lesson.
The READY too is also an excellent idea. As a parent whose son is in year 10 I dont believe we get the feedback from our child’s test result so we can help them correct where they are weakest. My son received an amber in his October test and the result was the only information I received – no feedback on test. With my son’s parents evening for the year not until March it seems like a wasted opportunity not have test feedback – he may need extra help or they may not be overly concerned and have it under control. The early Parents know the weak areas the early we can put things in place to help which would end up helping the teacher.
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