PREMIUM: Explaining to different types of class

Part 11 of the My Teaching series.

“But, Sir, you haven’t fully factorised the denominator”

The story so far…

I have been looking at how I teach now. I don’t think I am doing anything impressive, but I still think it’s worth reflecting on how I teach.

In Part 1, I described the context in which I work:

• I teach part-time and don’t have my own classroom.

• My school has policies that dictate many lesson features and routines.

• As part of those policies, all lessons are based on workbooks.

There have been ten posts so far.¹

• Part 1: How I start a lesson

• Part 2: Taking the register

• Part 3: Handing things out

• Part 4: Completing and marking the Engage Task

• Part 5: Using the mini whiteboards

• Part 6: It's 2025 and I'm still using PowerPoint

• Part 7: Starting an explanation

• Part 8: How I try to make my examples work

• Part 9: The process of explanations

• Part 10: More on the process of explanations

Parts 9 and 10 were mainly about how I phrase my explanations and how I use questioning. They used examples from an explanation of place value I gave to a low-ability Year 8 class. Here, I will explain how I take different approaches with other classes.