Yesterday I was shown a video of a Y6 classroom working on some maths, reasoning about fractions to be precise. The extracts from the classroom were interspersed with comment from their teacher.
It was a joy to watch. The relationship between the teacher and the pupils was tangible; the pupils were (dare I use the word) engaged, there was plenty of useful and informative discussion amongst one another, the teacher listened in but didn't overpower and gave children time to work on their ideas. Surprise surprise; children answered in whole sentences (!) and paid attention to the teacher (without 'tracking'), they took responsibility for their task and their learning. There was plenty of teaching. And, shock horror, there was laughter.
It was all a Y6 maths lesson should be; content rich, enjoyable, puzzling, memorable and collaborative: building a community of mathematicians. And Mr Malyn of St Margaret's C of E Primary School taught as if no-one was watching (thank you @EnserMark for this phrase).
Now some of you might know where I am going with this.
(Deep breath) So there are plenty of videos lessons out there, in particular on the NCETM website, purporting to demonstrate 'good' maths lessons. Some of these are of teachers brought over from Singapore as part of the government's push to adopt Chinese teaching methods in mathematics to raise our position in the. PISA and TIMMS league tables. My problem with these videos that I have seen is this. This is a visiting teacher, often encountering this class once and only once. Thus the culture of the classroom and the relationships between the learners and the adult are all missing. This is not unimportant. The reliance on 'from the front' instruction and the underplay (even elimination) of talk, discussion and the role of problems to situate and add context to the learning displays a particular type of lesson. And one I have worked hard to break down over 30 years because research has shown us how ineffective this is for many learners. Importantly, it is the teacher who is doing the maths, rather than the learners. I used to ask myself at the end of a lesson "who did most of the work there?" if the answer was me - well that's not really what should be happening, is it?
My question is this. If it was fairly straightforward for this publisher to find this English Y6 class to film (and in a school that has been in and out of challenging circumstances), how difficult would it be for NCETM to video the expertise and skill around in our UK classrooms? In a situation where a visiting teacher teaches an unknown group of children it is easy to slip into 'instruction' mode (let's leave aside here considerations of cultural differences). I know this as I have taught a fair few lessons in other's classrooms over a number of years.
So let's watch these videos with a critical eye. What has it got to say to us, with what we know about our students' learning? What am I persuaded about? What am I left wondering about?
In short - let's look nearer home and remember what it is we already know about learning maths. And let's all teach like no one's watching.
This video is in the public domain and is part of the package: "No Nonsense Number Facts: Teaching for mastery: Fluency through reasoning with number facts Y1-Y6" Published by Raintree and Babcock https://www.raintree.co.uk/products/9781474749541
