Within my time as a classroom teacher, curriculum writer and now National Lead of Mathematics, I have delivered training and talks with teachers across the country within the UK. I have delivered sessions trust-wide, specifically within Maths Hubs and conferences around the country such as Complete Mathematics conferences and Wellington Festival. My talks and workshops are a culmination of independent research, study and teaching practice within classrooms at some of the UK’s most transformative schools such as Michaela Community School and Great Yarmouth Charter Academy.

Each workshop I deliver aims to provide teachers with tools, strategies and/or techniques to deliver in the classroom the next day. My impact benefits a single teacher, a department of teachers, Heads of Department, Senior Leadership Team members as well as Trust leads.

Below is a list of sessions that I can deliver in the following instances:

  1. A keynote at a conference
  2. A workshop at a conference
  3. A half or full day of CPD
  4. Part of an INSET day
  5. Part of a Trust Training day
  6. A sequence of workshops

I am happy to deliver workshops live either in-person or via an online platform such as Zoom or Teams.

Mathematics Specific 

Workshop title: Atomisation: Breaking down your teaching like you have never seen before…

Proposal: What is Atomisation? Is it the next big fad? Atomisation is the process of breaking down a topic into its sub-tasks.

In this session, we will go through the process of atomisation in respect to teaching the topic of angles on parallel lines, break down the topic being taught into component skills, and plan worked examples and practice exercises to allow the highest percentage of your pupils to understand the concept being taught, on the first teaching attempt.

 

Workshop title: Engelmann Applied: Minimum Effort, Maximum Impact

Proposal: How can you plan your lessons to enable all pupils, especially the weakest pupils, to make as much progress as their more knowledgeable peer? How do you sequence distributed practice to ensure that your pupils are able to retain their learning in their long term memory?

This workshop will address both questions. It is an in-depth analysis in teaching the topic of Fractions within a mainstream curriculum inspired by Engelmann’s approach from his Connecting Maths Concept (CMC) Textbook series. I will explain how my teaching was structured to allow the weakest pupils to make extensive progress. I will explain the worked examples used, AfL questions used as well as the practice exercises. More importantly, I shall explain how the teaching using Engelmann’s work from CMC has enabled pupils to be successful and how this can be done with minimal effort but result in maximum impact.

This workshop is a follow up from a previously delivered workshop, Engelmann’s Connecting Maths Concept Textbook Series: Closing the gaps for the weakest pupils. If this workshop was not attended, blog posts summarising the contents are available on my blog. It is not necessary to have attended the previous workshop to benefit from this session.

 

Workshop proposal: The Pareto Principle of Lesson Planning!

Proposal: Does planning your lessons take forever?

Do you feel that your pupils aren’t making the right mathematical leaps in their understanding that you planned for them to make?

Do your pupils understand the concept being communicated on the third or fourth attempt, very rarely the first?

What If I could tell you that it is possible to plan your lessons so your pupils can learn the concept being taught on the first attempt, especially your weakest pupils!

In this session, I will talk about how the Pareto Principle can be applied to your planning. How is it possible to plan your lessons where 20% of what you have planned accounts for 80% of your results. We will look into how to plan a particular unit of work, break down the topic being taught into component skills, and plan worked examples and practice exercises to allow the highest percentage of your pupils to understand the concept being taught, on the first teaching attempt.

Let’s get rid of the common practice of re-teaching by learning about the Pareto Principle of Lesson planning!

 

Workshop title: Cracking Constructions

Proposal: I would experience dread when it came to teaching constructions. And, I’m not the only teacher who felt this way. But, there is a way to teach the topic in all its conceptual richness which is accessible to pupils across the ability spectrum.

In this session, I will suggest an outline of teaching the sub-components of the topic. We will look at areas of conceptual beauty! I’ll explain how to use Geogebra in the classroom with minimal effort (and no technological difficulties)!
There will also be plenty of resources available after!

Research Specific 

Workshop title: The Journey of Direct Instruction

Proposal: In the UK, Direct Instruction has gained significant popularity across schools and trust. This session will explain the importance of Direct Instruction by looking at its history. How did Direct Instruction become the teaching model ensuring significantly higher academic achievement than students in any other program evaluated in the most extensive educational experiment ever conducted, Project Follow Through? To understand its impact, we must learn its history.

Leadership Specific 

Workshop Title: Printer or Pedagogy

Proposal: Stuck, standing at the printer, waiting for the worksheets to come out. Later that same day you’ll be back here for the homework. Then, there’s an hour for putting on merits.

Your time is spent on tasks that don’t improve your pedagogy. How can you escape this?

After years of living like this, I wanted to escape this! I wanted an answer.

This session will look at creating systems and structures to revive your Maths department so the sole focus for teachers is improving or mastering their pedagogy.

I’ll outline the 6 months of change that I’ve implemented at Ernulf Academy, and the sustainable structures that have allowed teachers to gain time, boost morale, increase the level of teacher quality and accelerate the rate of improvement.

For Heads of Department and aspiring Heads alike, I hope what I share will shed light on where time leeches away from us, and how small changes can give you and your teachers back your time.