Episode description

In this week’s episode, Matt and Femi discuss a comment made by Adam Boxer –that the most common issue he sees in classrooms he has visited is that students are simply not properly paying attention to the teacher.

This is another conversation that will be relevent to teachers of all subjects – it is not maths-specific.  

The duo talk about why this is a problem and how it makes teaching harder, what ‘good’ looks like in this respect and how norms are established and broken, ways that attention gets diverted from the core principle the teacher is trying to teach, having a broad awareness and keeping plenty of capacity in working memory in order to take in and use the information in front of you – i.e. what students are up to.  They cover cues and signals that students may not be fully attentive, learning from other teachers by seeing it done expertly, the importance of explanations and high quality questioning, not rushing in to help students in the initial period of independent practise, and the difference between rules that describe what you don’t want to happen such as no calling out, versus providing students with proactive routines for what you do want to see, such as Doug Lemov’s SLANT.