Without these, pupils often fall into the trap of attributing importance to the so-called ‘surface features’ of a problem, which we naturally discount as irrelevant to the actual maths involved. The simple fact is we are all different. So why not have fun with that? Using a range of teaching strategies in primary school is more engaging for everyone and will really benefit the progress learners make. Here’s a list of 15 of our favourite teaching strategies for primary schools with links to fantastic Twinkl resources to designed to help put them into practice: With the new focus in the curriculum on knowledge organisers, there’s no excuse for children being without the relevant topic vocabulary. They need the words to be able to create the thoughts and the sentences to confidently speak about a given topic.

To make sense of all this it is worth turning to what philosophers of education say. Interestingly, the question, ‘What is teaching?’ hasn’t been a hotbed of activity in recent years in the UK and USA. However, as Paul Hirst (1975) concluded, ‘being clear about what teaching is matters vitally because how teachers understand teaching very much affects what they actually do in the classroom’.

In this teaching method, the teachers play a dual role. They act as learners and teachers; they learn new things every day while delivering the lecture. The learner-centered method is beneficial for both teacher and the student. The best way to implement this method is to follow the class’s discussion, inquiry-based, or discovery strategies. Content-focused methods Far more than simply “splitting the whole class into small groups based on attainment”, positive and effectivedifferentiation at the primary school level can be difficult to achieve – poor differentiation strategies risk actually widening the attainment gap we’re attempting to close. As we’ve already discussed, formative assessment is a significant aspect of how Third Space’s tutors gauge pupil progress. But we also make use of several other differentiation strategies during lessons, such as spaced practice, interleaving and a mixture of direct instruction and inquiry-based learning. 8. Reinforcing Effort/Providing Recognition Teachers still serve as an authority figure, but may function more as a facilitator or “guide on the side,” as students assume a much more active role in the learning process. In this method, students learn from and are continually assessed on such activities as group projects, student portfolios and class participation. The entire teaching corps, wherever its members may be located, shares most of the criteria of a profession, namely (1) a process of formal training, (2) a body of specialized knowledge, (3) a procedure for certifying, or validating, membership in the profession, and (4) a set of standards of performance—intellectual, practical, and ethical—that is defined and enforced by members of the profession. Teaching young children and even adolescents could hardly have been called a profession anywhere in the world before the 20th century. It was instead an art or a craft in which the relatively young and untrained women and men who held most of the teaching positions “kept school” or “heard lessons” because they had been better-than-average pupils themselves. They had learned the art solely by observing and imitating their own teachers. Only university professors and possibly a few teachers of elite secondary schools would have merited being called members of a profession in the sense that medical doctors, lawyers, or priests were professionals; in some countries even today primary-school teachers may accurately be described as semiprofessionals. The dividing line is imprecise. It is useful, therefore, to consider the following questions: (1) What is the status of the profession? (2) What kinds of work are done? (3) How is the profession organized? The status of teachers

One of the great advances that has been made in the last 5 years in the education sector in the UK is the increasing influence of large scale research and evidence informing what we know about how children learn, and consequently how we can better teach them. Separate from praise and rewarding effort, developing growth mindset can be a very valuable tool in developing pupils’ resilience and fostering a more positive attitude towards both maths specifically and learning in general. In personalized learning, teachers encourage students to follow personalized, self-directed learning plans that are inspired by their specific interests and skills. Since assessment is also tailored to the individual, students can advance at their own pace, moving forward or spending extra time as needed. Teachers offer some traditional instruction as well as online material, while also continually reviewing student progress and meeting with students to make any needed changes to their learning plans. In much modern usage, the words ‘teaching’ and ‘teacher’ are wrapped up with schooling and schools. One way of approaching the question ‘What is teaching?’ is to look at what those called ‘teachers’ do – and then to draw out key qualities or activities that set them apart from others. The problem is that all sorts of things are bundled together in job descriptions or roles that may have little to do with what we can sensibly call teaching.Sample lessons: Explore Mars: A Mars Rover Game, Make a Balloon-Powered Nanorover, Parachute Code Message National Gallery of Art Our tutors encourage pupils to verbalise their reasoning and ask questions to ensure pupils have really got to grips with the topic at-hand: “How do you know that answer is right?”, “Can you tell me how else you could work it out?” or “What do you need to do first to answer this question?” are all questions that come up frequently during our lessons! Sample lessons: Animal Habitats, Five Artists of the Mexican Revolution, Creating Comic Strips Audubon for Kids

We advocate the use of these kinds of diagnostic assessment to identifies a child’s misconceptions. Usually this is best achieved through a set of multiple choice questions. Share My Lesson houses over 420,000 free lesson plans and activities, organized by grade and topic. Whether you come by your preferred teaching methods organically or by actively studying educational theory and pedagogy, it can be helpful to have a comprehensive working knowledge of the various teaching methods at your disposal. Sample lessons: How Dirt Works, Fighting Fire With Fire, Recording the Rainforest The New York Times Learning Network

Whatever you’re teaching, chances are you’ll find helpful lesson plans, activities, printables, texts, and more on OER Commons. Hubs and Groups give teachers a chance to connect and collaborate too. Second, what do we do when people do not see the point of learning things – for example, around grammar or safety requirements? The obvious response to this question is that we must ask and listen – they may have point. However, we also must weigh this against what we know about the significance of these things in life, and any curriculum or health and safety or other requirements we have a duty to meet. In this case we have a responsibility to try to introduce them to people when the time is right, to explore their relevance and to encourage participation. All Third Space Learning intervention lessons make use of this kind of gradual scaffolding method, and our online platform lends even more flexibility to the scaffolding structure – tutors can pull from a bank of ‘support slides’ if spending more time on a concept or process is necessary. A sample support slide from TSL’s online platform. Other Teaching Strategies To Consider Online and private tutors have their way of teaching concepts within a certain time limit. Students with jobs mostly use this teaching method to learn during their free time and achieve their desired goals without moving places. Independent study or practice

Questions such as these are food for thought for educators everywhere, in part because they inspire ongoing reflection on how to make a meaningful difference in the lives of one’s students. As well as the correct answer, we can include multiple distractors – answers that are incorrect based on a misconception a child may have e.g. around multiplying. If a child chooses an incorrect answer therefore, we can easily identify exactly where their thinking has gone wrong.

Official preparation materials

To instruct someone… is not a matter of getting him to commit results to mind. Rather, it is to teach him to participate in the process that makes possible the establishment of knowledge. We teach a subject not to produce little living libraries on that subject, but rather to get a student to think mathematically for himself, to consider matters as an historian does, to take part in the process of knowledge-getting. Knowing is a process not a product. (1966: 72) Combining words and visuals in teaching materials. This isn’t referring to speech (as we established earlier), but having pupils create some kind of visual aid (e.g. a sketch, a diagram) to accompany written text can help them reinforce the concept in their brain in two different ways, making it easier to recall. Anyone who’s created slides for their pupils will be familiar with the challenge of imparting information through words + pictures. References Tied into questioning in the classroom, elaboration puts the onus on pupils to do more than ‘just’ recalling information. The use of open ended questions such as “How did I get that answer” help pupils to make connections between the things they’ve learnt rather than seeing them as several unrelated facts. 4. Interleaving