Craig Barton interviews guests from the wonderful world of education about their approaches to teaching, educational research and more. All show notes, resources and videos here: https://www.mrbartonmaths.com/blog/
Sign up for a no-commitment free trial at hodspace.com.
Access the show notes here: podcast.mrbartonmaths.com/233-hod-space-ep4-teacher-talk-finding-good-assessments-and-the-most-stressful-times-of-the-year/
In this episode of the podcast, Jo Morgan and Craig Barton discuss:
1. Teacher talk Jo brings a member's post about developing teaching and learning across a department, where a passing line about getting teachers to talk less drew some strong replies. Craig argues that the quantity of talk matters less than its quality, describing how he records teachers' explanations and plays them back in coaching, the research on redundancy and mazes in speech, and Kris Boulton's near-silent examples in atomisation. Jo reflects on over-exampling as a trainee, the choice of first example when expanding double brackets, why she still values longer periods of practice with some classes, and the shortage of videos of real maths lessons.
2. Assessments students have not already seen Jo raises a problem members are describing at both GCSE and A-level: students arriving at mock exams having already worked through the exam board's secure papers. She explains how this came to light at her school, why swapping in a different past paper no longer solves it, and how her department now writes its own papers by rebuilding old ones question by question, along with the workload, grade boundary and further maths difficulties that brings. Craig draws on his Inside Exams series to explain why a good paper is so hard to write, then offers to have AI produce one, a challenge Jo accepts.
3. The most stressful time of the year Craig puts a question to Jo that will also go out to HoD Space members as a survey: is there a point in the academic year that heads of maths find more stressful than the rest? Jo notes that staff absence is stressful whenever it lands, then makes the case for four contenders in turn, September, the run-up to Christmas, the spring term and the first half of the summer term, before choosing her winner. Craig compares her answer with his own memories of exam season as a classroom teacher without a head of department's responsibilities.
HoD Space
If you’re a Head of Maths or an aspiring Head of Maths, please join our HOD Space community, where you can find CPD and resources as well as a whole community of people doing the exact same job as you. Start your free, no-obligation, no-card trial at hodspace.com.
Episode Overview
In this episode of the podcast, Jo Morgan and Craig Barton discuss:
1. Teacher talk Jo brings a member’s post about developing teaching and learning across a department, where a passing line about getting teachers to talk less drew some strong replies. Craig argues that the quantity of talk matters less than its quality, describing how he records teachers’ explanations and plays them back in coaching, the research on redundancy and mazes in speech, and Kris Boulton’s near-silent examples in atomisation. Jo reflects on over-exampling as a trainee, the choice of first example when expanding double brackets, why she still values longer periods of practice with some classes, and the shortage of videos of real maths lessons.
2. Assessments students have not already seen Jo raises a problem members are describing at both GCSE and A-level: students arriving at mock exams having already worked through the exam board’s secure papers. She explains how this came to light at her school, why swapping in a different past paper no longer solves it, and how her department now writes its own papers by rebuilding old ones question by question, along with the workload, grade boundary and further maths difficulties that brings. Craig draws on his Inside Exams series to explain why a good paper is so hard to write, then offers to have AI produce one, a challenge Jo accepts.
3. The most stressful time of the year Craig puts a question to Jo that will also go out to HoD Space members as a survey: is there a point in the academic year that heads of maths find more stressful than the rest? Jo notes that staff absence is stressful whenever it lands, then makes the case for four contenders in turn, September, the run-up to Christmas, the spring term and the first half of the summer term, before choosing her winner. Craig compares her answer with his own memories of exam season as a classroom teacher without a head of department’s responsibilities.
Resources discussed in the show
- HoD Space — the community for current and aspiring heads of maths, with a free trial (hodspace.com)
- Resourceaholic — Jo Morgan’s blog (resourceaholic.com)
- Unstoppable Learning — Kris Boulton and Naveen Rizvi’s organisation, and the home of atomisation (unstoppablelearning.co.uk)
- Steplab — the coaching platform Jo mentions as a place to watch videos of teaching (steplab.co)
- 1st Class Maths — the source of the indices equations Jo uses with her Year 11 further maths class (1stclassmaths.com)
- Inside Exams — Craig’s podcast series for AQA on how exams are written and marked (aqa.org.uk/inside-exams-podcasts)
- Peps Mccrea — Craig’s planned guest on motivation and cheating in the age of AI (pepsmccrea.com)
Stuff we have been working on:
- My Tips for Teachers Guides to… series
- My updated mrbartonmnaths website
- Jo’s resourceaholic website
My usual plugs
- You can help support the podcast (and get an interactive transcript of this episode) via my Patreon page at patreon.com/mrbartonmaths
- If you are interested in sponsoring an episode of the show, then please visit this page
- You can sign up for my free Tips for Teachers newsletter and my free Eedi newsletter
- My online courses are here: craigbarton.podia.com
- My books are “Tips for Teachers“, “Reflect, Expect, Check, Explain”, “How I wish I’d taught maths”, and my Tips for Teachers Guide to… series.