PREMIUM: More on the process of explanations

Part 10 of the My Teaching series.

The story so far…

I have been looking at how I used to teach (when my pupils achieved impressive results) and how I teach now. I don’t think I am doing anything impressive now, 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 nine posts so far.

• 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 8 was mainly about how I make the examples in my explanations appropriate to the class. Part 9 gave more detail about how I phrased my explanations and how I use questioning. It used examples from an explanation of place value I gave to a low-ability Year 8 class. I will continue using that explanation as a source of examples. Hopefully, I will later explain how I take some different approaches with other classes.