Analysing teaching resources

Some teachers have found the Standards useful when planning of units of work.

Start by considering the Standards (particularly Standards 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4) to identify aspects of mathematics teaching pedagogy that you believe should be incorporated into the classroom.

Identify key elements that are important, for example, in engaging students. You may use different language from that in the Standards to express these elements; in some cases, specifics may emerge to add to these elements after consideration of the Standards.

Create a matrix in which the rows are the sequence of learning activities and the columns are these key desirable aspects of teaching — pedagogical priorities.

Each learning activity is then analysed to see which of the desired features in present. This is recorded on the matrix.

When the matrix is analysed, teachers can take action to address any holes that emerge by either changing the existing activities or searching out new ones.