Maths Teaching Idea #2
“Start from the hardest question you want your students to be able to answer” I was once told at an ATM conference, “and plan what route might get them there”. It’s a strategy that I’ve been thinking about for the majority of my teaching career and is one that often forms the basis of many of my lessons today.
If I am considering a new topic I often begin by searching for or thinking of a question that encompasses as much of the new content as possible. Presenting this at the start of the first lesson can be a catalyst for a range of routes through the module/scheme/topic.
Perhaps students recognise enough that they dive straight in. This might lead to novel and surprising intuitive methods to unfamiliar problems. This can lead to peer teaching and presentations, challenges to justify, generalisations, annotated examples and posters. It can also lead to obvious roadblocks in the lesson where there is a collective sense of being stuck. This is no bad thing and provides us with a reason to lead and learners with a motivation to listen and engage with the new content. Before this point learners can be challenged to explain and clarify what it is about the problem that is causing the ‘stuckness’.
Starting from the endpoint can lead to questions and discussion. Students might not know how to start but might want to ask about notation and vocabulary, might spot connections with other parts of the curriculum but not see how to use those similarities. Students can be challenged to identify possible ‘first steps’ in hypothetical solutions.
It can also serve as a point of motivation: we are going to learn this new content so that by the end of this lesson (or these series of lessons) you are going to be able to answer questions like this. Whilst this might be a small moment at the start of an otherwise standard lesson, providing a motivation for the lesson and the topic can increase student engagement.
