3-Read Friday #117

Principles over practices, frontloading participation, and big mathematical ideas

Here are three blog posts I found interesting this week:

1. Why principles beat practices every time by Mark Enser

The gap between doing something in the classroom and understanding why you’re doing it is often large and significant. Mark argues that CPD prescribing practices without their underlying principles breeds “cargo cult teaching” — perfect rituals, absent understanding. Practices are routes; principles are maps. And a profession trained only to follow routes, he warns, slowly loses the people who could ever draw a new map.

2. Managing Call-Outs in the Classroom by Jonathan Jarrett-Kerr

Every teacher knows the eager hand that answers before you’ve finished asking. Jonathan argues that praising a call-out — “well done, but don’t shout out next time” — backfires, because the dopamine of being right lands before the correction and quietly rewards the behaviour. The smarter move is to get upstream of it — by reordering a single question.

3. Beyond the ‘To-Do List’ Curriculum: Why School Mathematics Needs to Focus on Big Mathematical Ideas by Colin Foster

And to finish, a treat for my fellow maths teachers — and quiet vindication for anyone who’s ever suspected that the many topics a student struggles with are really one or two things in disguise. Colin argues that school maths too often becomes a fragmented “to-do list” of procedures — rehearsed, then forgotten. His alternative organises the whole curriculum around just five “Big Ideas” that cut across topics, starting with thinking multiplicatively. Many topic-specific struggles, he suggests, are really one shared weakness wearing different masks.

Have a great weekend!
Craig

🏃🏻‍♂️Before you go, have you… 🏃🏻‍♂️

… checked out my brand-new book series: The Tips for Teachers guides to…

And checked out my Ultimate Retrieval Tool page on my Mr Barton Maths website