Five ways to use our Planning to teach videos and resources

Our Planning to teach videos, with PowerPoint slides and supporting documents, offer advice and ideas for teaching a range of KS3 maths topics. They have been designed for secondary teachers, especially less experienced teachers such as NQTs, or non-maths specialists, and TAs/tutors teaching small groups. Experienced teachers also find them really useful.

Now most students are learning from home again, we suggest a variety of ways that the videos and resources can help you, your colleagues, and students themselves, of course.

1. If you’re still in school…
   Being in school might involve face-to-face teaching, online lessons, and a myriad of other things, meaning you probably have very little time. Why not download the supporting document for each topic and scroll to the final page? It includes links to lots of helpful resources and websites, and may just save you time when it comes to finding what you need when you next teach the topic.

    

2. If you’re teaching lessons online…
   The PowerPoint slides provide high quality questions that could easily be incorporated into your own PowerPoint and used in an online lesson. Even if you don’t have time to watch the whole video, you could watch the section explaining the question and ensure that you give your students the same opportunities for reasoning and discussion.

    

3. If you’re working entirely from home…
   Being based at home may mean you are spending a lot more time staring at a screen than you usually would. When you’re not teaching online lessons, why not print out the supporting documents for each topic, find a comfortable chair away from your laptop, and take some time to annotate them with any thoughts you have about how they relate to your own teaching? Then, if you feel ready for some more screen time, watch the accompanying videos to have your thinking probed even more. There’s a good chance you’ll learn something that helps make your teaching even more effective.

    

4. If you’ve got a little time for CPD…
   Keen to keep your own learning going during lockdown? Choose one of the available topics that you haven’t taught for a while, or that you would consider less of a strong suit for you. Watch the video and consider which of the ideas make you reflect on your own teaching of the topic. How could you adopt some of the approaches to deepen your students’ understanding? See if there are any tweaks or changes you would want to make to any existing lessons you have ready for when you next teach the topic. You could also include some of the sample questions from the PowerPoint slides in your lessons, and see how your students tackle them.

    

5. If you’re missing collaborating with your colleagues…
   Experienced teachers, NQTs, RQTs, TAs – we are all missing that powerful face-to-face collaborative CPD that inspires our practice and pedagogy. But these materials can be used to ensure that sharing of ideas can still continue. You and a colleague could both watch one of the videos separately, then get together online to discuss and use what you learn to plan a new scheme of work, or review and tweak an existing one to make it suitable for online teaching.

If you have used these videos and resources for professional development and planning, we would love to hear about it. Email us to tell us what you think of them.