3-Read Friday #23

Pace, productive struggle, and free maths resources

This newsletter is made possible because of Eedi. Check out our brand-new set of diagnostic quizzes, videos, and practice questions for every single maths topic, ready to use in the classroom, and all for free, here.

Here are three blog posts that I found interesting this week.

1. The problems with pace by Adam Robbins

Confession time: in my early years of giving feedback following lesson observations, I have definitely uttered the phrase “You need to improve the pace of the lesson” several times. Only now do I realise just how utterly meaningless and unactionable such feedback is. Adam hits the nail on the head in this post, identifying two fundamental problems that occur when discussing the pace of a lesson.

2. Is productive struggle ethical? by Greg Ashman

I first wrote about productive struggle in How I wish I’d taught maths, and it has fascinated me ever since. The idea sounds great - give students a problem to wrestle with to motivate them to want to learn how to solve it. But my experience has been that for some students such struggle has the exact opposite effect, and turns them off the new idea before we have ever got going. Greg has tackled this issue for his PhD, and reflects on his key findings in this post.

3. Mathematical Miscellany #91 by Colleen Young

Let’s end with one for the maths geeks. Colleen does a fantastic series of posts where she picks out her favourite resources and ideas she has recently seen. This latest collection is a cracker, with worked example animations, Venn diagrams, curriculum resources, and a set of free classroom activities from Eedi. Lovely stuff!

If you found this edition of 3-Read Friday useful, feel free to share it with colleagues. Also, you can check out all the back issues of my Eedi newsletter and Tips for Teachers newsletter here. But, most importantly of all, have a great weekend.

Craig