Product reviews for Making Every Maths Lesson Count

For those of you unfamiliar with the 'Making every...' series, the series of books covers a huge range of subjects and began with 'Making every lesson count'. From my limited understanding (based on two books and the introduction to this one) each follows a framework of six principles, adapted and focused on the subject at hand.

The chapters are well laid out and clear, taking the reader through the six principles: Challenge, Explanation and Modelling (rolled together because, as McCrea points out, you cannot truly have one without the other in maths teaching) Practice, Questioning and Feedback. As I mentioned, these principles underpin good teaching and feature in all the 'Making every...' books, but they are specifically related to maths. Within each chapter, McCrea combines evidence-informed pedagogy (drawing on aspects including instruction, variation and cognitive load theory) with practical activities and suggestions, breaking each principle into a number of strategies (helpfully listed at the back of the book). While a higher proportion of the activities and maths problems provided are from secondary objectives, a number are primary and the strategies are applicable whichever phase you teach. Each chapter ends with thoughtful reflection questions to guide a teacher's application of the ideas to their own setting.

Each chapter is laced with examples (pictures, tables, problems) and peppered with illustrations to break up the text. As noted earlier, the examples are often secondary in nature, but all, I feel, are within the grasp of any teacher in terms of accessibility. Mathematical concepts are also explained in a way teachers can understand even if subject knowledge of that concept is lacking. There are also some really great references to places to find out more, including sites to find specific types of activities. This is incredibly useful and they relate to a range of aspects.

There is a huge amount to take from Making every maths lesson count, but a few stand out for me:

Challenge is important, but teachers should carefully consider how challenge is introduced and how it is developed. McCrea delves deeper into challenge by introducing teachers to two ways of thinking about challenge - Depth of Knowledge (DoK) and FICT framework (familiarity, independence, complexity, technical demand) (p.21-28). These were new ways of thinking about challenge for me, although they encompass aspects I and most teachers will be familiar with. DoK has different levels to consider, and FICT considers the level of the four aspects in combination to increase challenge. This reiterates how challenge is not a case of 'do it another way' or 'make the numbers bigger' but needs to be a much more nuanced and considered part of planning and teaching.

Worked examples (and paired examples) are a powerful way to develop understanding. McCrea stresses the use of paired examples - a modelled example, followed by a minimally different problem for pupils to solve. She argues that this supports the research of cognitive load and, by following this, allows pupils to learn. What also stood out to me was the concept of incorrect worked examples. Again, something that many teachers will use (spot the mistake, what went wrong and so on) but McCrea tightens ones thinking about these examples, stressing the importance on focusing on one error or misconception.

We need to think about fluency synthesis when setting tasks and problems.' This is a big takeaway for me. 'Fluency synthesis tasks require students to apply their knowledge to more challenging procedural problems' (p.88) and McCrea goes on to explain that this involves recalling known knowledge. The example given sums up exactly what this means: while practising calculating the area of a triangle, pupils can develop fluency through the inclusion of fractions, decimals, metric/imperial measures and mixed units of measure. Furthermore, the procedure itself can be made more secure through inclusion of problems that are 'boundary cases' or non-standard, and those with too little or too much information. In this way, one task can secure a procedure as well as encourage pupils to retrieve known knowledge, which is a key aspect to making it 'stick'.' 

Overall, Making every maths lesson count is an 'easy' read in the sense that it is an uncomplicated text to engage with, but is packed with strategies and suggestions that any maths teacher can benefit from. This would make an excellent addition to any CPD library for teachers of maths, at primary or secondary phase.