1. Making the best use of pre-teaching and assigning competence.
Aim:
This workshop will provide participants with an
opportunity to explore understanding of pre
teaching and assigning competence in a practical
way, including using detailed collaborative lesson
proposals to plan pre-teaching episodes.
An understanding of some of the key principles underpinning successful use of pre-teaching and assigning competence and experience of planning pre-teaching sessions linked to lessons.

2. So much time is wasted at the beginning of a lesson if a child starts behind. When other children have a better understanding of a concept, they immediately start making progress. One child spoke of feeling muddled while everyone else knew what they were doing. It strikes me that the gap is widened at the very beginning of lessons…
Class Teacher

3. Widening the gap in every lesson
Some students come to the tasks with higher status than others; these students talk more and, as a result, learn more…Students who lack traditional academic skills or proficiency in the language of instruction or who are social isolates, are often perceived as low-status students. They barely participate, are often ignored, and frequently are not given a share of the materials or a turn at the activity. Students who are expected to be good at school or are popular talk more, have greater access to materials, and are more influential in group discussions.
Complex Instruction: Equity in Cooperative Learning Classrooms Cohen, Lotan, Scarloss and Arellano 1998

4. Assigning Competence
“Cohen (1994)…recommends that if student feedback is to
address status issues, it must be public, intellectual, specific
and relevant to the group task. The public dimension is
important, as other students learn that the student offered
the idea; the intellectual dimension ensures that the
feedback is an aspect of mathematical work; and the
specific dimension means that students know exactly what
the teacher is praising.”
Mathematical Mindsets Boaler 2016

5. Findings Pre-teach sessions must be run by the class teacher
Pre-teaching and assigning competence maximises learning in lessons
Pre-teaching and assigning competence have a positive impact on children’s confidence in themselves as mathematical thinkers
Pre-teaching can have different structures and focus on different things
Assigning competence is a powerful tool but can be more challenging for teachers to use effectively
These are the main findings – the first of these is the most important in terms of it being successful
Play video clip one (1 minute 30 seconds) and explain

6. Collaborative lesson research design
Identify what pupils already know
Identify the key points – the new knowledge
Identify the difficult parts
Step by step approach – journey through the mathematics
Anticipate the mistakes pupils might make
Questions to challenge thinking
Develop reasoning and understanding – consider contexts
and representations
Support talk and discussion
Identify what your team know (develop subject knowledge across the school)
The new knowledge what are you hoping they will be learning by the end of the lesson
– journey through the mathematics
Consider misconceptions that children might have the key learning points along the conceptual journey
the key potential difficulty points or misconceptions
a range of representations (including concrete, pictorial and abstract) to support deep conceptual understanding
careful choice of examples and use of variation including what it is (both standard and non-standard) and what it is not
key language and possible stem sentences
opportunities for making connections and going deeper
opportunities for exploration and problem solving

7. The pre-teach
The pre-teach is there to address the barriers the children might have in accessing the mathematics in the lesson, not to avoid them struggling in the lesson.
The assumption is that all the children could struggle with the mathematics in the lesson and we are considering the additional barriers that these children might have in accessing this struggle.
Often this is about hearing the whistle, being ready to start

8. Possible pre-teach focus
Introducing new mathematics, new contexts and new contextual resources
Explaining how the lesson is going to start
Rehearsing prior learning
Rehearsing language
Allowing confusion to happen
Using misconceptions
Using images/resources …
Talk about when and how long here
the aim is to help the children to be active and influential, not to run pre-teach sessions and assign competence.
That is, the focus is on the learners learning rather than the teachers doing!

9. Strategies explored for assigning competence:
Prime them to respond to questions, use stem sentences in the lesson already rehearsed in the pre-teach
Display and name children’s strategies/methods, explanations and reasoning including exploratory questions such as ‘I wonder if….’ on the working wall.
Orchestrate opportunities for the focus children to work with children they perceive as better than them at maths.
Support other children to publicly state how they have been helped by a class member.
Video the children being influential and play it back to them.
Support them to plan and teach younger children how to do something.
Video them modelling using a resource or explaining a calculation strategy that gets uploaded to the school website.
don’t over question in class. Assigning competence needs to be an organic process -Simply explain to the children that they are able to take part and offer ideas/explanations at any point during the main session. Provide opportunities for them to contribute but don’t signpost to specific children in an overt or clunky wayPraise for real and meaningful reasons which have mathematical backing rather than just praising effort –name a child’s strategy, get others to try it out..I think he’s onto something, that’s an interesting idea,…
Mary Kay Steins move from show and tell…
What have you been finding as most successful

10. Bloom, B 1968 Learning for Mastery
Boaler, J 2016 Mathematical Mindsets Jossey-Bass
Cohen, Lotan, Scarloss and Arellano 1998 Complex Instruction: Equity in Cooperative Learning Classrooms
Minkel 2015 Why I Prefer Pre-Teaching to Remediation for Struggling
Students
Takahashi, and McDougal 2016 Collaborative lesson research:
maximizing the impact of lesson study
Trundley et al 2016Teaching for mastery in mathematics in mixed-age classes: final report
Supporting children through effective use of assigning competence and pre-teaching