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#Mathsconf18: Atomisation Pt 2

 

 #Mathsconf18: Atomisation Pt 2

Atomisation: Breaking down your teaching as you have never seen before…

On Saturday 9th March I delivered a workshop at the La Salle Mathematics Conference in Bristol. This blog post is a summary of some of the points made in the session.

For this workshop, I chose to look at an uncontroversial topic such as Angles on parallel lines. I think it’s uncontroversial because teachers know that it is an undeniable part of geometry that is commonly assessed. Also, I think it’s a topic which is taught with a poor sequence of examples. Lots of angle problems on parallel lines feels like an angle chase – when you find one angle then how can you find the other angle. However, in the process, pupils can’t have the rich mathematical discussion between the relationships of different angle facts on parallel lines. Part of teaching this topic effectively is dependent on the sequence in which the examples are organised.

When I started making the worked examples for this topic, I thought about the simplest application of angles on parallel lines for each angle fact and the most complex application. What I realised is that I could have spent hours or even days making lots of different worked examples. To avoid this, I thought of how I could cover all the myriad of complexities for each angle fact within the fewest number of worked examples.

The first step was to write out all the sub-tasks that I planned to teach:

–   Vertically Opposite Angles are Equal

–   Alternate Angles are Equal

–   Co-interior Angles sum to 180o

–   Corresponding Angles are Equal

–   Basic Angle facts on parallel lines

–   Angles on parallel lines – Algebraic

o   Simplified expressions equal to 180o or 360o

o   Simplified expressions equal to form an equation with unknowns on both sides.

After I listed the sub-tasks, I realised that I wanted to try a different pedagogical approach from the status quo approach. Historically, pupils are told that one unknown and one known are equal, and they are to accept it, and then identify the unknown and known angle pair which are equal in a similar looking example. Instead, I showed a selection of worked examples where the angles were of equal size, and I would state that these two angles are equal. I used Geogebra which is an online graphing programme where I would have an interactive set up so if I moved one of the parallel lines or the traversing line, the equal-sized angles would change from what they were before, but they would still be equal.

So, using a sequence of worked examples, I would

1)   Show the relationship with the position of angles and the angle fact

2)   Find the missing angle

3)   Find the missing angle by using a basic angle fact

NOTE: Diagrams aren’t drawn to scale here.

Vertically Opposite Angles are equal

Here is an example sequence for Vertically Opposite angles being equal

Show the Relationship

At this point, I transitioned to asking pupils in a whole class discussion the size of the unknown angles because they had seen the relationship between the position of two vertically opposite angles.

I deliberately used more challenging examples for pupils to identify one missing angle which is vertically opposite to one known angle. This is because I knew it is these type of angle problems, they would struggle with the most so I went through it with them so they would be successful when they would attempt similar issues independently. I felt that showing the relationship was explicit enough for pupils to attempt the simplest applications of identifying vertically opposite angles being equal.

The third section is using basic angle facts from the list below:

  1. Angles in a triangle sum to 180o
  2. Angles in a quadrilateral sum to 360o
  3. Angles on a straight-line sum to 180o
  4. Angles around a point sum to 360o

To either use the angle fact to determine one of the two vertically opposite angles or find one of the vertically opposite angles to then find another angle using one of the basic angle facts.

Here are some worked examples of this with an explanation:

I made Example 4 deliberately to highlight that the small triangle FCB and the large triangle KCE have the same angles.

In Example 5 and 6 I have included 2 parallel lines and 1 parallel line segment to allow Example 5 to include an opportunity to use the ‘Angles around a point sum to 360o’ fact. Similarly, in Example 6 I deliberately didn’t label the vertically opposite angle because I want pupils to start finding angles that aren’t labelled but are required to find another unknown angle.

In summary, I followed the sequence structure of:

  1. Show the relationship
  2. Find the missing angle using the angle fact given
  3. Find the missing angle fact using basic angle facts to then determine angles using the new angle facts learnt.

Alternate Angles are equal

Here is a worked example sequence showing the relationship in positioning of Alternate Angles being equal

Now using the same geometric structure as the worked examples used to show the relationship of alternate angles, I’m asking pupils to find the size of the missing angle:

Here is a sequence of worked examples where basic angle facts have been interleaved:

Co – Interior Angles sum to 180o

Here is a worked example sequence for Co-interior angles summing to 180o

In Example 7 and 8, pupils can see that each triangle formed by both traversing lines and one of the parallel lines all have the same size angles.

Here are examples where pupils are asked to use the fact that co-interior angles sum to 180o to find the missing angle:

 

In the last two examples we can explore so many interesting mathematical patterns between co-interior angles and parallel lines. In Example 6, A = I and G = C

Here is the next section of worked examples where basic angle facts are being interleaved:

Corresponding Angles are Equal

Here is a worked example sequence for Corresponding angles being equal

Here is a worked example sequence where pupils are using the angle fact that corresponding angles are equal to find the missing angle:


 

Here is a worked examples sequence where basic angle facts are being interleaved with the angle fact that corresponding angles are equal:

 

#Mathsconf18: Atomisation Pt 1

Atomisation: Breaking down your teaching as you have never seen before…

On Saturday 9th March I delivered a workshop at the La Salle Mathematics Conference in Bristol. This blog post is a summary of some of the points made in the session.

This presentation was on the topic of atomisation. Recently, atomisation has created a lot of conversation on Twitter and at a couple of conferences. What is atomisation and is it the next fad?

It’s not the next fad.

Atomisation is the process of breaking down a topic into its sub-tasks.

Atomisation is a term coined by Bruno Reddy who taught me about it during my second school placement in 2014.

Atomisation is the starting point to every booklet I create in my role as Curriculum Advisor at United Learning. I sit down and list all the sub-tasks that I need to teach that is within the topic. An example of this for Perimeter is available here.

What are the benefits of Atomisation in respect to the big picture?

Atomisation is a process in which teachers can collaboratively identify the specific and detailed knowledge that pupils must know to be academically successful.

Identifying this specific knowledge means that pupils can learn as close to 100% of the domain of knowledge that they need to know. Exam boards and the national curriculum, truthfully, may provide high-level specificity of what needs to be taught, but not the finer details or detailed knowledge that goes into making pupils able to do a task.

For example, pupils are expected to know the following fact below:

Fraction x Fraction’s Reciprocal = 1

And upon reflection, this seems understandable in respect to multiplying fractions, index notation, ratio, proportion etc. but it is not necessarily explicitly stated in exam board specifications or Curricula.

The lack of detailed knowledge outlined by exam boards or textbooks results in teachers reducing the subject content being taught. And the source of information of what needs to be taught from children usually comes from exam tasks, and then the curriculum becomes an endless repetition of exam materials. Similar thoughts have been shared on Daisy Christodoulou’s blog.

Mathematics as a subject is vast. There is so much to teach a child in the space of their academic career. Here is a visual:

If the bubble represents 100% of the domain of knowledge that needs to be taught. It is the case that we teach small samples of that domain. We teach concepts and how they overlap with other concepts, and we also teach connections between different concepts. However, if we use exam boards and textbooks as our source of information of what needs to be taught in the curriculum, then we inevitably miss out teaching other parts of the domain.

The process of atomisation enables teachers to focus on the concept and identify the finer details that aren’t readily available. Atomisation allows the teacher to teach as close to 100% of the domain of knowledge.

What are the benefits of Atomisation in respect to the teaching process?

Identifying and sequencing all the sub-tasks and specific knowledge that needs to be taught for a concept increases the probability each child will be successful in the learning process.

This means that pupils will be able to appropriately and accurately respond to planned questions, or that they will remember what has been taught at that moment after a long period.

Teaching aspects of a concept that are usually overlooked undermine how successful each pupil will be in respect to their future learning.

For example, not teaching pupils that:

Fraction x Fraction’s reciprocal = 1

undermines a child’s ability to attempt questions like this:

Show that the ratio in the form 1:n can be written as 1: 1.5

If pupils get these questions wrong, then the incorrect inference is made. Instead, they must be retaught the topics of ratios from the beginning, but they only need to be taught this fact. And this is a fact has been mentioned several times in the Year 8 Curriculum so far. I’ve resourced a section on problem types like this for the most recent ratio booklet coming out.

Teaching all the sub-tasks of a concept and sequencing it in a logical sequence prevents pupils from being cognitively overloaded because each sub-task taught is being used or covered in future learning. In the teaching process, pupils will have committed prior knowledge in their long term memory so any future learning will occupy space in their limited working memory.

What are the costs of Atomisation?

The cost of atomisation is a valid one. The initial stages of teaching a concept take more time to cover the content. If we explicitly teach more sub-tasks than we would normally then we would have more time available to teach the rest of the curriculum. However, by not explicitly teaching all the sub-tasks of a concept it will result in the following consequences:

  1. Reduce the probability of a child learning parts of a concept on the first attempt
  2. Undermine a child’s ability to access future learning

Atomisation avoids these inadvertent consequences by:

  1. Guaranteeing a greater likelihood a pupil will learn the sub-task on the first attempt
  2. Increasing the probability of success when learning future content or more complex applications of the concept
  3. Saving time in the future which would be inevitably spent re-teaching
  4. Revealing sub-tasks that need to be taught that are usually overlooked in the curriculum.

In summary, Atomisation has improved my teaching and as a result my pupils learning more and remembering it a half term later, a year later etc. More importantly, it benefits the children that struggle with learning the most. Atomisation has allowed my weakest pupils learn more in less time, and in my small world, I believe that this is a path that I will continue down when creating resources.

 

 

 

Talks, Workshops and CPD Packages

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.

 

Thank you, Siegfried Engelmann. Thank you.

On February 15th, the world lost an educator who spent his life developing an approach to accelerate the learning of disadvantaged pupils.

Engelmann was a Marketing Director turned Professor Emeritus of Education at the University of Oregon. He co-authored the famous ‘Theory of Instruction’ with Douglas Carnine and co-developed the term ‘Direct Instruction’ while working with Carl Bereiter. Through grant funding, they set up the Bereiter-Engelmann Pre-school which demonstrated the extent to which disadvantaged pupils could accelerate their learning in comparison to the performance of middle-class pupils.

I have spent the last couple of years becoming familiar with Engelmann’s work, taking aspects of his Theory of Instruction and applying it in my resource creation.

So, what have I learnt from Engelmann?

Answer: That a learner’s inability to respond appropriately to a form of instruction may not be the fault of the child; instead, it can be a problem with what she’s being taught.

This means it’s possible to teach a syllabus in a way she can respond to appropriately without dumbing it down. Here are the four things I keep in mind when creating resources that allow the highest percentage of pupils to understand the course content on the first attempt.

Atomisation

When I used Engelmann’s Connecting Maths Concept textbook series with my Year 7 and Year 8 Intervention pupils, I saw that Engelmann had taken a concept and broken it down into several sub-tasks. A sub-task is a small aspect of a concept. For example, A sub-task of how to add fractions with denominators would be finding the lowest common denominator. For a pupil to develop a flexible understanding of a concept, she needs to be taught as many sub-tasks of the concept and then shown the connections between each of the sub-tasks.

Atomising does exactly this. When I plan a unit of work, I take a concept and break it down into its sub-tasks, and I explicitly teach even the most nuanced aspects of the concept. For example, before I teach pupils how to factorise an expression, I teach pupils how to divide an algebraic expression by an integer, or by an algebraic term. Before I even do this, I teach pupils whether we can also divide an algebraic expression by a number or an algebraic term. An example is shown below:

Here are some examples, of where we can simplify the algebraic fraction:

Here are some examples of where we CANNOT simplify the algebraic fractions because we cannot divide ALL the terms in the fraction:

The value of this exercise is two-fold:

1)      Pupils are taught the most nuanced aspects of a concept which are usually the most difficult parts of the unit being taught. If the most challenging part of the concept isn’t taught explicitly then how can we expect pupils to attempt the most complex applications of the concept? We need to be more thorough and comprehensive than you might think and teach the most complex elements of a concept as well as the most basic.

2)      Pupils develop a flexible understanding of the concept because they can see the big picture. If you plan an entire unit rather than isolated lessons parts, you are more likely to teach as many sub-tasks as possible and not miss anything that’s essential to a student’s understanding. Missing out sub-tasks inevitably means you have to re-teach. Engelmann set up his textbook series to avoid the need to re-teach. If re-teaching is required, Engelmann provides appropriate correction and reinforcement exercises for each unit of work.

Sequencing the learning in the most effective manner

Engelmann’s Connecting Maths Concept textbook structures the content of a unit of work in just that sequence where the learning can be delivered most effectively. Engelmann believed that all future learning is dependent on prior learning and that there is an optimal sequence for each concept. Provided the lessons are sequenced in the most effective way, pupils always have the knowledge required to access the topic they are about to learn. At United Learning, scheme of work is structured and resourced with the same philosophy in mind. The underlying idea is that how effectively the pupils learn depends on the sequence in which they learn about a particular concept.

Scripting the lessons – Pedagogy

Scripting how you communicate the concept is essential. Now, many teachers despise scripted lessons, and some with good reason, e.g. the script they’re expected to follow is sub-optimal. Another reason for their scepticism is the belief that there is more than one optimal way to teach pupils about a particular concept. However, Engelman persuasively argues that there is only one optimal way to teach a particular concept – and his scripted lessons were field tested with tens of thousands of pupils and constantly being refined in response to feedback. Consequently, he was confident that the scripted lessons he and his colleagues developed embodied the most optimal learning sequences.

When I created my resources at Great Yarmouth Charter Academy, I started scripting how I would communicate concepts, to ensure pupils received the most effective and efficient form of instruction.

Then, I would think carefully about what method to communicate.  For example, I didn’t want to teach pupils how to add fractions using a method which was limited to only a few problem types, and then create a different method for another set of problem types. Instead, I tried to create methods that could be applied consistently to as many problem types as possible. This allowed pupils, especially the weakest, to master each concept in all its myriad complexity; evidenced by ever increasing scores in weekly quizzes.

Lastly, my scripted lessons were designed to give pupils the grounding they needed to articulate their understanding. Here is a video showing how a pupil using this knowledge to subtract negative fractions:

Low-stake quizzing and providing appropriate corrections and reinforcements

Engelmann’s Connecting Maths Concept textbook has many opportunities for pupils’ understanding to be tested. The script includes hundreds of questions for teachers to ask. Pupils are given exercises to try with the teacher, as well as independent exercises. Similarly, after every ten lessons, there are also small quizzes recapping what pupils have learnt, not only in the last ten lessons but in the previous 20, even 30.

At Charter, one visitor tallied the number of questions I asked pupils in a single lesson, and they totted up 76 questions in about 25 minutes. I learnt from Engelmann’s teacher scripts how to ask pupils’ questions which test their ability to recall prior knowledge, articulate their knowledge of a concept, to explain a misconception, etc.

In summary, I believe that Engelmann is one of the most important educators of the 20th and 21st Century. I think his work will stand the test of time. By applying his teaching principles to resource creation, I have helped my pupils learn more, and remember it for years to come.  My experience confirms, for me, that teacher quality is a function of the resources they have access toChildren are more likely to be successful with a teacher, who has access to exceptional resources, than a teacher who doesn’t, and never has.

Engelmann’s work has taught me more than any educator that I studied with during my PGCE and MA. My next post will look into the evidence for the effectiveness of Engelmann’s approach and the reasons why his work hasn’t been more influential.

After my podcast with Craig Barton, I have received many emails asking to share more booklets. I have attached the booklets that I made during my time at Charter. They aren’t perfect, and with my current workload, I am not in a position to refine them. However, I do think they are useful for teachers who want to start designing their own booklets. I used each booklet with all my classes. I hope they are helpful.

There will inevitably be mistakes in the booklets. I take full responsibility for any errors that you see.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=16UtxWsL3T5M2wz65YjwfRYyJ3BZSNZZp