From figuring out your resources to learning how to manage your time, here’s how to make your new-term resolutions stick and ace your first year of teaching with Maths — No Problem!
The first day of school is never really the ‘first day’. You’ve probably spent weeks researching, planning and making sure you have everything you need to support your learners. This is especially true for teachers who are starting their first year of teaching with a maths mastery approach.
So to help you stay on track, we’ve put together four of our top tips for your first year of teaching with Maths — No Problem!
1. Follow your Maths — No Problem! resources list
At the beginning of your journey, Maths — No Problem! provides a resource list that outlines every maths mastery resource you’ll need throughout the year. Using this at the beginning of the year will help you organise your classroom and ensure you avoid unnecessary resources taking up precious space that you’re not ever going to use.
Where to keep number topic resources
As a general rule, the number topic resources are the ones that should live in your classroom permanently — as they’re the ones you’ll use over and over again. Often, the non-number topics resources will be used by multiple year groups. You don’t need them to be within reach in your classroom as they’re only used for one specific chapter.
Where to put the teacher tray
It can be really helpful to have a teacher tray at the front of the room. This tray can include number topic resources, so you don’t have to get these individually for every lesson.
If you’re teaching younger year groups, it’s useful to have resources like unifix cubes or Base 10 blocks. I found that sticking magnets to the back of my maths mastery resources makes it really easy to work through concrete methods on the board with the class.
How to use mini whiteboards
If I had to choose a favourite classroom resource mini whiteboards would be a major contender!
Mini whiteboards are my favourite way to teach the anchor task. The anchor task lets children explore and surface their ideas in an unstructured way, and mini whiteboards are perfect for supporting this mindset.
The anchor task can be done in a book or on paper but sometimes learners are less likely to want to explore and make mistakes in books because they carry a certain expectation. Books have presentation standards and mistakes can feel permanent. It can be particularly difficult for ‘perfectionist’ learners to work in books, as they often don’t like to have wrong answers or crossing out.
There’s no need to have permanent evidence of the anchor task. You’ll have plenty of other opportunities throughout the lesson to evidence a learner’s level of understanding. The anchor task is about letting them try out different things without limitations.
