Secondary maths teachers - Is there a more painless way to write resources and lesson plans?

[queensansastark]

Just had my first interview day for teaching secondary maths. Fingers crossed.

So as part of the selection process, I had to write my first lesson plan - I used Word and Excel. Literally from a blank sheet, it was painful and time consuming, the formating, having to generate tables then graphs in Excel then pasting it into Word. Then trying to write all the signs and symbols and formulae which Word is clearly not geared up for.

I am clearly missing something! I feel I wasted too much time on formatting and word processing instead of the actual maths.

So
Any tips?
What software to you use for creating lesson plans and resources?
How does that work with the interactive whiteboard (which I have not had a test drive on yet).

TIA

I teach secondary but I think our infant school use the iwb a lot. They showed us the dice and game maker thing at our training but I so can't see me doing that with adults!

How wrong can it go curriculum wise with GCSEs maths textbooks?

Maths is maths but what you are teaching isn't always the same as what the textbook has questions on. For example, I was teaching solving equations with unknowns on both sides to my Y10 C grade kids. The textbook had a couple of suitable questions, then started on ones where the answer was negative or a fraction, or ones with brackets in. I just needed a bunch of straightforward ones so I couldn't use the textbook.

Then you've got our KS3 textbooks where each topic has 3-4 questions. By the time the slower kids are just getting started the quicker kids have finished and are wanting something else to do. Easier to get a resource with more questions than to juggle textbooks and worksheets.

For actual teaching, I'm a very lazy teacher. I'll often just project up questions from mymaths/someone else's PowerPoint and annotate them, or write my own questions on the board as I go along. I do a lot of making up questions on the spot according to what the class is finding tricky/easy. So if we are expanding brackets and they get it, I can ramp up the difficulty in response, instead of having to pre-prepare resources where I anticipate all possible difficulties.

G1ffe but isn't that way of working why there's such a problem with teacher workload?

I don't think it's preparing lessons as such no. We've always done that. But like noble I can do that in short period of time. It's all the evidencing every decision you are making and proving everything you will do/have done.

I'm not a teacher yet. So what do all these "evidencing and proving" look like? What do you actually have to do? What's the deliverable?

We use textbooks in our school, a lot. We have the "essential maths" books for ks3, which are pretty good as long as you choose the right book for each class. Obviously they don't get every topic perfect for every class/teacher, but supplementing a textbook when there's a topic you don't like is easier than writing your own resources for everything. We've also got textbooks for the new GCSE, I think they're from the essential maths people too. We like the 4-9 textbook but the 1-3 and 4-5 textbooks aren't quite as good, we still use them for a lot of topics though.

We took our iwb out a couple of years ago too, and we're so much happier for it. I love being able to project a question then write/draw on it in normal whiteboard pen, rather than having to faff about recalibrating the iwb multiple times in a lesson.

My lesson plans are fairly easy to format, we have a school wide pro forma that we use for observations. It's simple, just headings for each section, info on class, starter, main, plenary, homework, link to future learning, etc. Then within those headings I write what we're going to do, why, and how it will be assessed, adding as much info as necessary. If we're using worksheets I paperclip a copy of that to the back, possibly with a data sheet about the class.

I regularly use resources found on the internet. As a school we subscribe to mymaths but only really use it in the run up to tests for revision style homework, because we like to see the working and methods the pupils use rather than just scores which is all we get from mymaths. We like mathsbox too, which has some good resources for most topics. And mathsprint which is good for creating worksheets full of fairly standard questions.

www.class-templates.com/lesson-plan-format.html

Thats one example of a word template there are others.

Word since 2010 can work with equations simply go to the insert tab, press the pi symbol and all sorts of equationy things will appear.

I've been teaching maths for a couple of years now. I much prefer projecting a PowerPoint or pdf and then writing on a whiteboard next to it. I find using a PowerPoint is good for teaching concepts, engaging, and helpful. Some of my groups work well with textbooks, but others prefer worksheets. I do a lot of past exam questions to consolidate learning as well.

Sometimes I hand write, scan, save as pdf or ppt and project.

TES is great for sharing resources. I often download three or four ppts on a topic and merge together to suit my teaching style and groups. A good scheme of work is essential, my department is excellent for that.

I love teaching and love maths, which in lesson observations has been commended. But I use what's already out there in the TES, mrbartonmaths, corbettmaths, keshmaths etc

And I very rarely have a full lesson plan written. In observations (and in fact any lesson) I can clearly state my LO, my PP and SEN kids, and have differentiated my lesson. I can track progress through department protocol of assessment and marking.

I agree about rarely writing a full lesson plan now. I only write a full plan when I'm being observed. But that's with 12 years experience, when I was a student and nqt I wrote loads for most lessons, almost like a script for the examples, it's only with a few years experience that I am confident about being more flexible.

Arg. I have to in adult ed. Never did regularly apart from for observed lessons in secondary!

That sounds horrible. I know one of the secondary schools near us require full lesson plans for every lesson handed in to hods on Monday mornings. It was brought in to improve standards of teaching, but it means good teachers won't consider applying there due to the workload.

In observations we aren't asked for a formal lesson plan - but we are expected to be able to discuss with the observer everything that would be in it if that makes sense? So I often have notes to that effect in my book if I need them.

MsMermaid every Monday morning for every lesson? For every teacher in a secondary? For what purpose, that's ridiculous!

Apparently so. I don't teach there so I'm not entirely sure of the details, but the teachers I've spoken to who have left there say it is every single lesson, every single week, and they have a proforma to complete, pretty much full A4 size. They all want to leave even more than they did when they were first put into special measures, this was brought in about a month later, to "improve standards" apparently.

betadad I have heard about Kerboodle. Not the others. Why don't schools just buy that in rather than text books

Because if your resources are all online then you either need every student to have an iPad/similar to access them in lessons which is way more expensive and problematic than textbooks or you project the relevant page onto the board for the kids to answer questions from. But projecting questions onto the board is an issue because for the text to be of a reasonable size, the number of questions you can project is very limited so you end up with quick kids waiting on the slower kids. You also can't differentiate by saying 'if you get this, start in section B but if you need easier questions start on section A'. I also like textbooks with the answers at the back so kids can check their work as they go along.

I don't plan my next lesson until I've taught the previous lesson and sometimes I bin my plan and do something else as the lesson progresses so me handing lesson plans in on a Monday would be worse than useless as I wouldn't use them, but would have had to spend time writing them.

That's how I tend to teach. I'm glad it's not too crazy if I do step back into real school then...

Me too Noble. I need to know how they get on on Monday before I can plan effectively for Tuesday's lesson. It seems like a massive amount of wasted effort to me.

Open office is a free download, you write equations exactly as you would say them so '2x squared + 3 all over x cubed'

And what do you find is the best folders structure to organise your resource files? By Key stage, then topic, then worksheet vs lesson?

I presume you also have naming conventions for your files as well?

I could be being over control freaky here though...

My pc files are under classes, with the search function to help with finding stuff next term on etc

My paper stuff is either in cardboard flap style folders, or in one ring binder and polypockets.

No point in filing by key stage because you might find yourself using the same resource with a bright Y8 group as a middling Y10 group.

My worksheets are filed into number, algebra, space, shape and measures, data handling and probability, subdivided into things like angles, time and timetables, sequences, coordinates, properties of number. I can usually find stuff quite easily.

Mine are filed like Noble's, algebra, data, shape, number, then each folder is split into smaller topics. I tried filing by yeargroup but I use resources with different yeargroups, like this week I've used the same sheet about straight line graphs with y8, y10 and y11.

Yes that folder structure makes sense noble and mermaid.

So.

Word or PowerPoint for lessons?