Ideas for Collaborative Planning in Secondary Maths Teaching
As a maths department, you probably meet regularly, talk often about your planning, and chat over coffee about how lessons have gone. But are you really collaborating?
Firstly, let’s dispel some myths about collaborative planning. It certainly doesn’t mean the topics of a scheme of work being divided up, each teacher given some lessons to plan, everyone dispersing to various corners of the department, then hundreds of lessons being uploaded to a folder on the shared drive a few hours later. Instead, effective collaboration involves teachers thinking deeply about how students will approach, learn and retain the maths that they are being taught.
Often, really thinking about what you will teach involves having a go at it yourself. Whether it’s in a department meeting, co-planning time, or just over a cup of tea at the end of the day, try some of the questions you are going to give to your classes.
Instead of glancing over a topic that you have taught dozens of times, make sure you approach the maths as though you were a student, comparing and discussing your answers, and the thinking that you did to get to them. Sometimes, it’s useful to do the actual tasks you’re going to give your students (that you will therefore approach as an ‘expert’), but it’s also important to put yourself in the position of the learner occasionally, and do maths that perhaps is beyond your comfort zone!
Going through the process that your students will experience can help you agree to some common approaches that you might take as a department, especially when it comes to addressing misconceptions. You don't all need to agree to teach the same things in the same way, but you might agree on a particular representation that best models a certain concept, or a task that all students will experience. Sharing your understanding of how students deal with the maths they encounter helps you all create a more powerful sequence of lessons through a topic.
In their feature, the NCETM gives a few suggestions of what collaboration might involve, and points you towards some features and podcasts which explore how schools have made collaboration work for them in different settings. The NCETM also highlights some resources which will enhance your department’s collaborative planning, whatever form it takes.
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