#232 HoD Space ep3: AI and homework, setting students, and the equals sign

Craig Barton

HoD Space

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Episode Overview

In this episode of the podcast, Jo Morgan and Craig Barton discuss:

1. AI and homework Jo brings a topic that has come up in several HoD Space threads: students using AI to complete their homework. She points out that no format is immune, then questions the growing practice of following homework with an in-class test to check it was done, drawing on her daughter’s experience of the pressure this creates. Craig argues that it is safest to assume every student is cheating, and, harking back to Dani Quinn’s description of the approach at Michaela, makes the case for reframing homework as preparation for a near-identical quiz in class. The two end up only partly in agreement.

2. Moving students between sets An anonymous member asks how to handle set changes when every move brings a wave of parent complaints. Jo explains why she rarely faces this: all classes follow the same curriculum, changes are limited to clear outliers at the mid-year point, and the language of top and bottom sets is avoided altogether. Craig warns against letting homework scores feed into set changes and challenges heads of department to think about how they allocate teachers to classes, while Jo reflects on what students’ responses to her Axiom Maths recruitment task revealed about enthusiasm and setting.

3. The equals sign Both hosts have posted about the equals sign on HoD Space this week. Craig summarises a study of Year 6 pupils in Northern Ireland which found that those who understood the symbol as meaning both sides have the same value outperformed their peers, and argues for using the language of sameness in lessons. Jo describes what her Steplab drop-ins have revealed about notation in students’ books, from meaningless arrows to missing equals signs, before the two open up the question of when to use the identity symbol and why consistency across a department matters.

Resources discussed in the show

  • HoD Space — the community for current and aspiring heads of maths (hodspace.com)
  • Resourceaholic — Jo’s blog (resourceaholic.com)
  • The Ultimate Retrieval Tool — Craig’s free quiz generator, including the follow-up quiz feature discussed in topic 1 (mrbartonmaths.com)
  • Introducing the Ultimate Retrieval Tool — Craig’s write-up of the tool and ways to use it, including as preparation for an in-class follow-up quiz (Eedi newsletter)
  • Dani Quinn – Part 1: Michaela School, Planning Lessons, Low Stakes Tests — the earlier episode in which Dani describes Michaela’s homework and weekly tests (show notes)
  • Axiom Maths — the fully funded maths circles programme Jo’s school has launched this year (axiommaths.com)
  • Steplab — the professional development platform Jo’s department uses for lesson drop-ins (steplab.co)
  • Exploring how understanding of the equals sign relates to additive and multiplicative equivalence performance beyond arithmetic fluency — Mills, Di Lonardo Burr, Rodgers, Denvir, Wylie and Xu, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, the paper Craig summarises in topic 3
  • Tips for Teachers newsletter — where Craig breaks down a piece of research each week (tipsforteachers.substack.com)

Stuff we have been working on:

  1. My Tips for Teachers Guides to… series
  2. My updated mrbartonmnaths website
  3. Jo’s resourceaholic website

My usual plugs

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