Good Lesson/Bad Lesson

This year, for the first time, I'm making sure I'm doing more open ended projects with my classes, particularly in Key Stage 3. I'm trying to make sure it's all I do with one of my classes for the rest of the year-a lower ability year 8 class. They won't see a text book this year-they are all rubbish and boring. At times I slip back into giving them a series of closed questions, especially on algebra topics I need to cover but will figure out ways to link these topics to shape and number in the future.

Anyway, for the next three weeks we're doing a project on 'ProZone'. ProZone is a compnay which analyses football matches from a statistical perspective and sells their results to football clubs for an obscene amoun of money. My students know all about the company from their PE lessons and they also know that on Friday they'll be watching the second half of Spurs against Bolton (Lincoln City Vs Chesterfield was soundly rejected by them which I think it a shame) with the overall plan of designing a poster and written report about the Statistics of the game. This lesson they had to plan a data collection sheet, some of the pupils presented what they did to others in the class and others commentated on what they liked and didn't like about the work and, more importantly the problems they would face when recording their data while watching the game. Talk. Talk. Talk. Its only recently that I've been encouraging them to talk about maths identifying it as a weakness in my lessons and they're still not at all used to this way of teaching but slowy they're getting used to communicating mathematically verbally.

I loved this lesson, the students could see an outcome and purpose for what they were doing, they talked openly about each others work and were mainly respectful of each others ideas and opinions. They were able to plan and be forward thinking about their work, skills which can be transferred not only to other lessons but also to beyond the classroom. Great. I'm looking forward to their results and more importantly getting them used to talk about maths-something which is done really infrequently in maths lessons in this country, something I'm more than guilty about myself.

Then onto my intermediate year 11s. They've an exam soon. I told them about substituting values into formulas. I gave them some questions. Some of them did the work. Some of them needed help. Some of them will get the question correct in the exam next week.

They will all have forgotten the skill the week after.

The sad thing is most of the classes I teach are like this be it due to a lack of time to plan appropriately or that there's an exam coming up soon and they need to be taught what's on it. It's not good enough at all and this type of 'traditional' maths teaching is endemic in schools from primary through to A-Level by either lazy, pressured or poorly trained teachers. It's not good enough. It's a misrepresentation of what maths is all about, maths isn't a series of procedures to be remembered and regurgitated, it's a vibrant, logical and expressive way to communicate the world. We over test our students and it results in poor teaching and not enough creative problem solving, communicative tasks. It's a trite and repeated opinion however it's also very true. I don't feel that from years 9 to 11 I could do a 'Prozone' type investigation with my students despite feeling it's the best way for them to learn and be engaged with maths. I fully understand that I live and die as a teacher on my results and I also understand why. It's such a pointless, counterproductive way of doing work.

As my colleague, Irish, like to say 'Pick the Daisies'. She is so right. I had a great lesson with my year 8s and will have a good two weeks with them that's what to remember because they'll remember that lesson for a much longer time than my year 11s will remember theirs.