Mr Barton Maths Podcast

Craig Barton interviews guests from the wonderful world of education about their approaches to teaching, educational research and more. All show notes, resources and videos here: https://www.mrbartonmaths.com/blog/

#015 Ed Southall: Part 1 – SolveMyMaths and Mathematics PGCE Tutor

byCraig Barton

Ed is a maths teacher, blogger, Twitterer, teacher trainer, and the author of Yes, but why? Teaching for Understanding in Maths. We spoke about good questioning, dodgy plenaries, creating a safe learning environment, and false conventional wisdom

For more information about today’s guest, plus links to the websites, resources and ideas they mention, please visit the show notes page: http://www.mrbartonmaths.com/blog/ed-southall-solvemymaths-and-mathematics-pgce-tutor/ 

Show Podcast Information

On this episode of the Mr Barton Maths Podcast, I spoke to Ed Southall.

As well as being a prolific blogger and Tweeter, Ed is the PGCE Mathematics Tutor at the University of Huddersfield. Interestingly, he combines this role with teaching in a local secondary school two days a week, thus giving him something of a unique perspective on both maths teaching and training.

In a wide ranging, interview we covered the following things and more:

• How does Ed use Concept Mapping to plan sequences of lessons?
• What classic mistake does Ed think many teachers make in the plenary of their lessons?
• What so-called conventional wisdom does Ed hear about good lessons that he does not agree with and fans of purple pens and lesson objectives, beware!
• Ed brilliantly describes a bad lesson he taught and what he learned from it
• We talk about Ed’s forthcoming book about uncovering the “why” behind mathematics
• Why is creating a safe maths environment so important, and how does Ed do that?
• What does Ed mean by a “Safe Lesson”, and why should every teacher have one up their sleeve?
• If Ed could completely redesign teacher training what would it include?
• How should differentiation best be done?
• What books would Ed recommend maths teachers to read?
• And Ed gives a lovely answer to the question “What do you wish you had known when you started teaching that you know now?”

Remember to check out our brand new, completely free Diagnostic Questions GCSE Scheme of Work is now live. Head over to diagnositcquestions.com and sign in to find out more.

You may have noticed that mrbartonmaths.com has had a long overdue summer make-over. I am particularly proud of my new Topic section, where you can find full lesson, worksheets, videos, rich tasks, topic-specific Diagnostic Questions, interactive resources and probing questions on every single maths topic up to GCSE. More importantly, I also have a new maths jokes and puns page, containing award winning maths movie title puns such as Pi Hard, Factor the Future, and Radius of the lost Arc. The last one is probably the best thing I have ever come up with in my life. Head to mrbartonmaths.com to check all the new stuff out.

On Twitter, Ed is @solvemymaths
Ed’s Blog is solvemymaths.com
And Ed’s lovely profile on the University of Huddersfield website is here

The “current obsession” I refer to is Mr Taylor’s amazing “Increasingly Difficult Questions”, which can be found on his blog here, and they are also linked to by topic in the Topic section of my website. Simply find the topic you are after and click Lessons.

To see the books Ed recommends teachers to read, please visit: mrbartonmaths.com/teachers/books/

Ed Southall’s Big 3:
1. openmiddle.com
2. Aplusclick.com
3. jamestanton.com