Prompts to improve teaching and learning

Tracking

  1. Are you aware of the key stage 2 levels for the pupils you teach? Are these sub-levelled either in thirds or by decimals?
  2. Are you using yearly formal assessments to support tracking pupils’ progress again using either thirds or decimalised levels?
  3. Do you know how to use a pivot table in excel to support you in identifying pupils not making good progress?
  4. Are you tracking more than once a year due to school policy? If so how often?

AFL/APP

  1. Do you analyse pupils’ scripts (yearly at a minimum) to enable you to set curricular targets both at class level and individual level?
  2. Are you aware of the Assessing Pupils Progress (APP) assessment criteria to support your formal and formative assessment strategies and levelness?
  3. When planning lessons do you build in probing questions to support you with questioning techniques and hence using good AFL strategies? Are you aware of the progression maps?
  4. Do your pupils have opportunities to explain their reasoning and methods?
  5. Are your pupils clear about what they are expected to learn in lessons and how to show evidence of this?
  6. Do you use whole class resources to check understanding e.g. mini-whiteboards / Red Amber Green Cards etc
  7. Are your lessons chunked to allow pupils to reflect on their learning and to provide opportunities for formative assessment (examples could be peer and self assessments)
  8. Do you have key homeworks that will provide evidence of levelness, if so are these marked using ‘comment only’ marking and provide an indication of how a pupil can improve?

Planning

  1. Do your lessons focus on pupil understanding or developing skills to obtain correct answers? i.e. Do you teach for understanding (relationally) rather than by rules (instrumentally)?
  2. Have you worked together as a department to produce a unit of work, preferably a unit on a topic where pupils are underachieving across the department?
  3. When you use text books and work sheets do you allow for differentiation by giving pupils the opportunity to assess for themselves where they need to start and finish and how much consolidation is needed before further progress can be made?
  4. Do you work collaboratively as a department to consider the consistency of teaching specific concepts / topics to allow for clear understanding?
  5. Do you plan for group work / paired discussions?
  6. Do you plan for a variety of activities to support learning and to engage pupils? E.g. if teaching area you could support them orally, kinaesthetically by allowing them to move objects / bits of card around and visually using dynamic geometry software.
  7. Do you plan into lessons opportunities for pupils to work things out for themselves?
  8. Do you use pupil level data and targets to plan at the correct pitch and to allow for differentiation and challenge?

Cross-Curricular / Functionality

  1. Have you written a unit of work with another faculty to improve cross curricular links?
  2. Have you built in rich tasks (nrich website) / investigations / non-routine problems and open ended tasks into your schemes of work and lesson planning to allow pupils to access the key processes and process skills to improve functionality and develop broader mathematical skills?
  3. Do your lessons allow pupils to use different areas of mathematics and make cross-curricular links?
  4. Do other subject areas support you in improving numeracy skills?

ICT

  1. Do you use ICT to deepen understanding of particular concepts?
  2. Do your pupils have regular access to ICT?
  3. Do you provide access to on-line learning and is this directed at individuals who need further support or extension using knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses including knowledge of their curricular targets?
  4. Have you seen / used the Bowland Maths Materials?
  5. Do you use dynamic geometry in lessons such as GeoGebra to support understanding of geometry and algebra?

Intervention

  1. Do you use the year 9 targeting level 5 materials produced by the strategy including the Easter homeworks and mental test practice? Are you aware of the additional resources on the Lancashire website to support pupils working above level 5 with the mental mathematics?
  2. Have you used the on-line SATs mental mathematics practice?
  3. Do you use the year 7 level 3 to 4 lessons produced by the strategy?
  4. Do you analyse mock SATs to provide a targeted revision programme?
  5. Are parents supported in any way with approaches to calculation?
  6. Do you use mentors to support pupils underachieving? e.g. Year 10 pupils could mentor a year 7 pupil using the Mathematics Challenge materials on a weekly basis during registration?
  7. Are you aware / do you use the Lancashire 10-4-10 KS4 revision materials for C/D borderline pupils and A/A* pupils?
  8. Does your tracking system support you in identifying the correct pupils for intervention?
  9. Are you aware of the on-line intervention modules produced by the strategy?
  10. Does the school provide provision for the Study Plus course which is a KS4 C/.D borderline timetabled option?
  11. Do you have time to plan with your teaching assistant?

Afl Strategy ref 00341-2008DOM-EN ISBN 978-1-84775-147-8

(google DCSF-00341-2008)