Ep 19: Gareth Metcalfe: Making Resources, Teaching Problem Solving & Maths 'Anxiety'

0:00 Hello everyone. Welcome back to the next installment of teach sleep. Repeat, my name is Dylan and my name is Hayden and you could tell by our wide Smiles that we've just had an amazing recording for this episode with another guest. You know, it is, you've seen the title we're going to get into it really, really quickly. But Hayden, I'm going to do some plugging, okay? You don't mean to do it. No, because you don't never remember correctly. When you have to, when you have explained already joke. Is it really works? Well, does it? But anyway, I'm going to work. Just now plug some of our social media. Test my memory because there's a different one but every single platform Iran. So on the spot you can find us on Instagram. I know you can find us on Instagram at teach sleep, repeat podcast. You can email us or email us on our Gmail at you sleep, repeat POD at gmail.com and we are now on Twitter come and find us.

0:44 It's me you to eat. Hey, that's got his own one. He's too busy running that personal account, you can find us at TH s our podcast on Twitter. Now, am I positive? That's the actual name. No. But if it's made the cut, then it is so Make sure you find us there and that's the problem. Having seven different names for the different things anyway, Hayden. How excited are you for this chapter about how? Well, as you've already said, we've recorded it, but it's damn. It wasn't amazing. Let's not pretend, I just a pretend we have a just recorded it. It's an incredible Chaska slipper, the viewers or listeners have got an exciting conversation upcoming. If they are as nerdy about mouths, as you and I are There is one thing that Hayden and it's a problem for some people who are listening in order for the podcast to continue playing.

1:34 You need to give us a five star review. So as long as you've done that do that now really quickly, if you're listening, give us a five star review, gets us more guess in the future, more amazing chats, but the podcast has actually stopped. If you don't do that, and send us five pounds in the past, right? So yeah, 500 500 pounds. Anyway. Yeah. Shall we have the chat that we definitely not had yet and just a pre-recording this. Let's move on to the chat. We're about to have We are really lucky today to be joined with another guest, mr. Garreth Metcalfe himself who I personally have been a big fan or for a very long time. I know that Dylan has been laughing at me for a fanboying behind the scenes on the lead-up to, to this episode. So Gareth just want to say a huge. Thank you for joining us.

2:19 Let's dive straight in and let the viewers and listeners know a little bit more about you and why you're here today. So Gareth could you just introduce yourself and let us know, perhaps, you know, what is your involvement in the Teaching wild. Yeah, thanks. Hayden is really great to be here and kind of my background professionally. So, I did my nqt down south and then I've been at one school at one school in Stockport for Jack's, beloved, for 12 years, an amazing time, there it in my time there, I did a little bit of work with Stockport local Authority and supporting with math. Specifically, I wrote a lot of resources around maths and I was very lucky to work with a literacy. An amazing man and literacy consultant that many list.

3:01 As well. Know I've called Alan Pete and publish my first ever Resources with Alan and which was fantastic, but I guess my passion, then just became specifically in maths teaching and I love the school I was at, but I wanted to broaden my teaching experience and so in 2017 took a really difficult decision at the time to leave. But to work directing my own company. I see maths and but what I wanted to do is broaden my teaching experience as well. So, in that move, I made sure that there were a number of schools somewhere in England, simran, North Wales where it have an ongoing teaching commitment. So, I ended up teaching classes from Nursery to year 6, and in a range of different types of schools demographics, which was just fantastic.

3:52 Really enjoyed that. And then, as spending some time writing resources, ever since and doing some training, and really that kind of Meandering journey is still where I'm at now. And really enjoying it. Well, I remember, I remember your first resources back in maybe I guess about 2017 because I purchased one of your first I see reasoning PDFs. And I was in awe because I was quite a fresh teacher at this point and I actually came to see you as well at one of your training events around that time, and I remember just sitting there as I have fairly new teacher thinking, this guy is teaching. Is this guys doing it? Exactly how I imagined the master is supposed to be taught. And just using your resources, go around the school saying, come on, we got to use these.

4:35 Got to use these because this is, this is how we should be teaching children, how to solve problems. So thank you for doing that. It must have been quite a scary leap for you at the time, but clearly, clearly, a really good one. So, with regarding your resources, where are they kind of act now? Because obviously, that was a long time ago that I I looked into those have you have used kind of developed a whole Packer of resources. Now, that's a much larger than yeah. Well, that's really interesting story because my the First-ever resources actually wrote and the ones that are referenced that were published by by Alan. Pete were requite off the wall at Sea and were real kind of passion project of mine. The first one was called the maths apprenticeship and and it was around extended real life challenges at that point for year six children and so had some amazing memories which we may refer to later of rolling out those tasks. And and I wrote some other resources as well which will really like looking at really Richie Aging, Matt's tasks that at that time, were more aimed at children. High retaining children and I remember writing a blog post, quite a while ago.

5:41 And that was when I was new to writing blog posts which which probably had and in our thought I'm just going to I'm going to share some examples of something more, the kind of tasks that I do on a day-to-day basis and I didn't really expect them to particularly people's interest, but I actually had an enormous Reaction to that original blog post and it made me think well actually what I really want to focus my effort on is how do I help teachers that? And I say time, pressure teachers and of course that's all teachers to have some resources. Great open-ended resources, interesting thought-provoking challenges at the fingertips right across the breadth of a primary maths curriculum.

6:25 Something you could more use on a day-to-day basis. And in doing that, I had like a huge bank that I've used with it. With the classes that I taught which were primarily in up, Key Stage 2 and and really I guess, ever since then, I've looked, you know, over the course of time, particularly working different classes. You realize you pick up new ideas. I follow other people and I think, oh, that's a technique. I could build in. And so the resources, keep growing and my aim over the course of time will be to keep doing that same thing. But you really big Banks of resources but I guess the idea is How is it? We give children tasks that. Don't just develop the content knowledge, but also provide them opportunities to be creative or to have to persevere to find multiple possible answers, and to be able to see different perspectives.

7:16 So, it's whilst I want the children to have the opportunity to develop that content knowledge as well through the tasks. I also hope it just gives them a different experience of engaging in in maths and kind of builds their, if you like the characteristics of learning as well. I'm going to come in quickly because I'm something you said there. I noticed a lot in your resource for. I've seen it before where you had certain levels and I love those kind of ideas of going going deeper and deeper. And you think find one answer find as many answers as you can find all the answers. And that idea of, I was able to give that to my class and some children were just working at the level of finding an answer. And then I had some who very quickly moved on to finding as many answers as possible and others who are coming over ideas of how to make sure they've got all the possible ways and it was amazing to see as a man.

8:02 Ask teacher that so that a whole group of different abilities, being able to access kind of the same tasks and that idea of actually, it's how far you go and that kind of opened up my thinking to approach a mats in that kind of way of, you know, that kind of Mastery idea of everyone's achieving the same out. The same goal, the same objective, but they're all getting there in different ways and pushing themselves to different levels and that kind of click something for me. And I thought I'd love to be able to approach all of my math teaching and that way which I think is really powerful. Yeah, I think like one That that's always really driven me. Is the idea that I think Max is unique in the range of emotions that it invokes. And that's something that I always think is precious about about mass. And whenever there are certain kinds of tasks that where children have to be able to self-regulate and it gives them the opportunity to, and to explore to a greater extent. Then I feel that they experience Taste of the actual richness of what it is to be a mathematician. If you like rather than just to develop the content knowledge. And I think it's been that that's been the thread which is gone right throughout all my kind of resource creation and that's certainly the intention anyway. No idea absolutely did it really did what we're going to do now though very quickly we did this last time we had a guest and it's something we're trying out because we finished it last time and the poor person said I felt

9:32 The pressure doing that, so we're not trying to do that to make that. Clear. But we're going to play a quick kind of game. Okay, so we're going to I'm going to say one word, I'll do an example on Hayden now. Okay, so if for example, I said to Hayden the gym, I'd want him to come back to me and say the first word that comes to his mind. So, Hayden the gym terrifying, you know, so something he might want to avoid so, well, that will say, I'll say a word and just your first thought coming back to it. You ready? You're up for this? Absolutely. Okay, we tried to pick some relevant ones as well. So first one, number one rote, learning necessary. The times table, check your 40.

10:17 I'm good necessary. Yeah. All the way through. Okay marking Marking. More or less specific. Oh, I can explain that. Just oh if you want me to you can go and explain it because the idea is breaking the sometimes marking we can be less specific. Feeling willing talks about this. And for a correct or incorrect little. There is this is we need to be more specific, but I like the idea of giving children more work to do, where is absolutely? Okay, let's keep going staff training. Ongoing.

11:05 English. English. I said no, my mind is gone. That's why I'm not trying to be mean I promise. Okay. A couple more ready. Yeah. The key stage 2 SATs. Unlimited. Oh, teacher well-being. Crucial. Maths investigations. And Rich, mmm.

11:47 And the last one, we always finish with this one because I just find it interesting to see what people say straight away ofsted. Necessary evil. Brilliant all eyes. That's my favorite one yet. Very good. Okay. So the idea of that is we just get to break the ice a little bit and sometimes like we did with marking, we can just dive in a bit deeper there. And I think the one thing that I found interesting was when you said Rich from Mass investigations because I've found in the past of Master vestigation. Is this kind of linked to us? Suppose your resource creation? Is it could it used to be a little bit like when I started my career? That when it came to investigations or even problem solving and maths, it would be a Friday job and that would come from SLT down and it would be like well it's problem solving for its word problem Friday and I feel like as a as a whole profession thankfully I think with moving away from that a lot now because I think a lot of people when the new curriculum came in, maybe thought it was just trendy to kind of shoehorn it in there and just say oh we're doing a problem-solving day and I think problem solving is a lot more nuanced than that now. So just wondering really what's your kind of opinion on the place of problem?

12:53 In the curriculum and how we can kind of embed that a bit more wholesome, a bit of a more wholesome approach instead of it just kind of being shoehorned on and being a word problem, which doesn't really Encompass problem. Solving that. Yeah, well it's a great question and hopefully I can touch on just some of my some of my random responses there. And I'd like to think of problem solving as being the the end that we're aiming at. And and so when we talk about things like the times, Table check and maybe we could you know how everything going to use the word necessary. And and fluency, I would see that as almost a means to the end. And the end being we want children to be able to engage in Breakdown, all kinds of different problem-solving tasks.

13:36 And, and we know that flute, flute, recalled times table. Facts is not the enemy of that. It's not the opposite of that. It's just it, lessens, the burden on working memory and but the thing that I think is really important is we don't see. Problem solving is the thing that as A is the icing on the cake but more that this is fundamentally, when we look at why we even engage children in mathematics, it's you think it's about it's partly or a, to a large extent. It's actually about them being able to break down different types of problems and think independently to build these skills. And so I think of problem solving, in terms of let's say there's a there's a sequence of lessons and we think we want the children to be engaging this kind of tap. Kind of tasks and to have the skills in a toolbox to break this down and to explore this kind of task and I would think well how do we work backwards from that rather than problem-solving Friday?

14:35 I don't think the issue is that we doing the problems. It's just it's just a disconnect and like we refer to and I think we know that we need a lot of domain-specific knowledge to have success in problem solving and I think I under-appreciated earlier my career how important that domain specific knowledge was Probably thought, if I build shouldn't ability to problem, solving one aspect of the curriculum, then they'll be able to do it in another as well. And it's probably more reliant on that domain specific knowledge. But I think the thing that's really important is thinking, well, how do we target? Well we want to pick the children to be able to engage in these kinds of problem-solving tasks and therefore the journey for them to get there.

15:17 We'll need to look like this and for that to be coherent. And I guess one of the issues that That I see where there's an over and over Alliance on schemes. I think if we just blindly follow a scheme, what we in some instances, we might end up with is the highest attaining children doing the problem solving at the end of the lesson. And I think it's really important that we model what expert problem solving looks like, and we provide sequences of challenges that build shuns capacity to problem solve and rather than it being something. Because to some extent that perhaps is an element to which we can consider. Well, the children can meet age-related expectation without having to go that deep within the problem solving and I think that's process.

16:07 Perhaps it's like kind of Separation that that use completely true because I know for a fact Hayden lion and all teachers we can fall into that trap and you hear things sometimes and we probably been guilty of saying in the past where we think. Okay well you know, in terms of data for these children they can get X amount of marks on the arithmetic paper, and we can really focus on that fluency and really get them to be practicing that over and over again, and not necessarily exposing those children to problem solving that's appropriate for their ability and their understanding of those Basics. So a big thing we did in school was we did a lot of Staff training and trying to implement the idea of problem solving for everyone. What you just said and we can't save it as a challenge. It's not a challenge. It is the maths.

16:49 It's as fundamental as that and the idea of okay, how can we Sure that those children who may be struggled to meet age related standards in arithmetic and don't meet that level of fluency for their age expectation. How can we study ensure that those children are receiving? Enriching problem-solving activities which are relevant for them. And the kind of conclusion we came to was that it's okay to. If you're, for example, teaching a fraction to unit. If your child still may be working at a year below level or not quite there. It's okay to dip back into the curriculum, a bit lower to provide them with those. Problem solving ability those chances to do problem solving in a way where they're confident with the maths and the structures of what they've got to do.

17:32 But then their cognitive load is really focused on actually breaking down the problem rather than struggling to do the math in the first place in which case we see a lot of children, hit a brick wall and they can't access it. Absolutely absolutely. And that is the advice that I would give a guess. Really. And looking for the tasks, like, when we're looking for problem-solving tasks, we're looking for something where there's not a clearly defined. G2 to find the answer. And, and we might have to think. Well, where do we lessen the Challenge from to make that accessible. And, and like, the most obvious example, would be the number range that that quite the task itself asks us to work with them. But considering how is it that we still engage children in those kinds of tasks?

18:14 Because I do think as well with it even with a SATs papers they a lot of the problems, what we would consider the worded questions, the problem-solving tasks are Are relatively routine. And there are some big you're a little bit more off the wall and but there's a degree to which you can predict some of the structures that will exist. And but I do think it's really important that children have that balance of experience so that there aren't too many too many like their experience of math is doesn't become too close and too limited and even including the kind of emotional responses that I would like to have Walk through when their attainment slower. I think we is easy to see how that can happen for a child is attainment is higher.

19:00 But I think like, you say, it's incumbent on us to think. We'll how is it that we can ensure? That all children are given those those experiences absolutely. And even on a Tuesday May it doesn't have to be a Friday. Gareth, I know you've made videos and you still do make videos which are upload to Youtube and I imagine other places as well and I've been really fascinated fascinated with a few of them because I've actually seen That you have taken stats questions, and you've kind of systemically kind of broken them down. You know what's your when you're doing that? What is your advice to other teachers? What's your procedure for breaking down? The typical kind of SATs problem. That's maybe a couple of steps and actually teaching children ways to solve these problems without just going through because I thought I fall into this trap all the time.

19:50 I'll go through a particular SATs paper or question. But I don't really feel like the children are getting loads from from that from that, you know, simply just solving that one problem, but I feel like you do it in a different way that opens up a whole new Avenue of being able to actually teach children how to solve problems. Yeah. Thank you know this is something that I'm really passionate about and I have to say this is one of those things where I feel really privileged because all of my thinking I can I can invest into maths teaching. Whereas you know I know how challenging it is when you're full-time class teaching you maybe have other responsibilities. To really spend the time you'd need to dig into one question and think, how can I break this down? The thing? I kind of keep referring to is and is a research paper, which you'd be able to find if you Googled it, which is removing opportunity to calculate improve student performance, on subsequent, word problems.

20:41 And the kind of the, the basic binding was if we initially take away the possibility of children telling you the answer, then they'll have to think about the structure of the question first. So I would say powerful, absolutely. I would normally just look at a question and think what can I remove at first? So children can process this information but they can't tell you the answer. And then I would think what, what are the pieces of information I can load in now it might be as simple as covering one of the numbers or it might just be. I'm going to hide a piece of information and then I'll slowly reveal that or I might ask the children. So what information do we need to be?

21:23 Given to answer this question, what information will be under this box and I had the luxury of being able to think for quite a while about one question and thinking well how is it that this could be revealed? So I think like an example would be a from the previous year's SATs paper, coordinate question, which we might consider one of the most difficult ones in the paper. And we can look at the information that's given and then we can start thinking, well, well what what, what do we already know? And maybe we can, we can work some kind of an estimate from the information that's given. What other information will we need? And then look at how that information can kind of be slowly built back in that it's fascinating because it's In that, you know as you know as mass leads in school, we are constantly thinking of ways of trying to help our staff, like like you're saying they're your, you say you're privileged to have that time to kind of dive deeply into maths. And one of our biggest goals as leaders in school, is to try and allow staff to make that professional development to have these amazing resources to have these brilliant ideas without being incumbent on them to spend hours and hours doing so. So it's one of our biggest challenges and that's where your kind of resources really do.

22:33 Have such a powerful impact on staff. Because it's so clearly broken down. Anyone can follow it. And the way you explain things is really powerful, and I think it gives it gives teachers that ability to actually feel like, they're properly teaching problem-solving, not just teaching maths, not just teaching procedures, which I think we fall into a lot, but to feel as a teacher that you're teaching problem-solving, is kind of our goal because I'm completely on the same page as your garage. When you say what's the point of teaching? Maths? Well well we want functioning adults in our society, you can approach problems and solve them by using these mechanisms. Isms that we call Matt. I mean it's just it's brilliant just here talking about it. It's awesome. Something I did want to ask you about though in terms of kind of link to our role as misleads. I know Hayden and I are constantly thinking of ways of how to help our colleagues.

23:19 Basically, you work with a lot of schools like you said, and you provide training to a lot of people just wondering, really how you find that and in terms of D, do you find a lot of pushback sometimes to changing the ways? We teach maths. I know maybe with Who kind of set in their ways before this idea of Mastery came in, you know, setting and having task a task, beat RC and starting on certain points. It's kind of changed a lot. It feels like and Hayden and I kind of trained to be Math teachers as that change was happening. So we don't know any different. Do you find? There's a pushback of many teachers or do you find? They're just kind of there to take in as much as possible and want to change and want to improve. How do you find that as a trainer?

24:00 Yeah, I mean, I have to say that I've been over the course of all the time of all the work that I've done. One with teachers, I've just been blown away by by teachers and their capacity to want to support and help children. And and I, you know, I've just got an overwhelmingly positive experience. The thing that I would say though and I experienced this myself teachings, massively, it's just that the time we talked about well-being, the time pressures that were under our time is so precious. And There is and also, almost at the mental energy that you have is, the job is so demanding. And and I think the issue is, when, when you have to, it is cognitively heavy to have to deviate from the resources that you have what you kind of currently do. And obviously, there's only so many different Avenues you can explore at any one time.

24:56 And so I do think it is, let's say from the perspective of maths leader, it is thinking about when is it Right. And which as I say buttons, is it right to press which things is it right to explore and some thought about the process of that so I might start the ball rolling for schools in terms of suggesting let's say looking at the way to deconstruct a question and then the thing that I always encourage schools to think about it is what that process might look like. So initially it might be an individual or a couple of teachers explain what would this look like in my in my class and I know Doing like a little trial and then thinking we might build a little bank and being considerate as to what's the right time to address this with the whole staff, given the whole they kind of bigger picture because I think it is.

25:50 And I think the teachers Express the this is something that they have a desire van, it's something they see the benefit in and, and teachers wanted to be able to focus the teaching around the Problem solving, but its limitations are really understandable as well. I think to some extent you're really hitting home with me personally because I know, I know exactly what you mean, as someone, who is really, really passionate about teaching maths. I'm having mixed emotions always for this conversation because I'm starting to reflect on, you know, my my job right now and I'm like, do you know, do you know what? There are certain things that we've talked about. I feel like I've not done that in a while. I guess I used to be like the most passionate person about doing this and I've got done A while. Why is that?

26:35 And you just think? Yeah. Is it the pressures of the teaching is it? Because after you get passionate, but you're passionate about something for a while and then suddenly, I yeah you got this massive English skin to come in now. Actually, we've got a rework this curriculum in history, so you're going to work on that now for a bit and suddenly after six more things, you know, you find yourself as a year. Six teacher in particular, I find myself falling into that trap of. Yeah. But these kids got a pass that test and like Dylan said earlier and this really hit home because I hate it, I hate it. I do this but it definitely happens. It's that whole, hang on. How am I going to? Am I going to maximize these chart these children's marks because I've got one month left until the SATs now, is it a these rich maths lessons of problem-solving that make, that might not get them quick marks in this test or is it?

27:20 Or let's just do some arithmetic, because actually get some there. And I hate to say it. But I know people will be nodding there. Listening is quite often the one that gets you better stats results. And I hate that I really don't like the fact that Even I'm falling into that trap as someone who's really, really passionate about this subject, which I'm finding quite hard. And let me say that I would be I'd be exactly in that same boat. So I've taken, I think, I think it's 9 Co has been might be 10 through science and like the thing I would say is to and we all, you know, we're all under that pressure and there are, you know, to some extent, there are certain benefits and children, derived from having that real For Stephen.

28:04 And and it's certainly true that if you want to improve and I also been in that situation many times, you know, where you want to improve children's attainment and you've got a month, then the correct thing to do is to focus on the developing, the kind of content knowledge. And that is, you could say that's appropriate at that time and, you know, we shouldn't have this specific focus on the living up to the SATs. And I think them having that experience of dealing with something that's, you know, they may see Being pressurized it in the course of their life, you know, might not be such a bad thing that they, that they have that experience. They come through that. I think the issue is, if that's their experience for six or seven years.

28:47 And I think there's a time where we want to think, right? We want to really build children's capacity, as for example, as problem solvers. And we want to build a learning behavior. And then they'll be a point at, which, which is from need to nail the content knowledge. The, I mean, the other, the other thing just to kind of touch on that as well, is I think it comes to the importance of thinking of working through things as a whole school as a staff so that individual child has a care and experience. And thinking, if it's for example, looking at deconstructing word questions, if we introduce a variation of like the same approach when the children are in year one, and then you too, and it develops in year 3, but we have the same thing. Um, so one of the things I talk about is covering the information that a blue box and the question with a red box often if I'm, if I'm doing that when I'm looking at a question and so children, can it get to see that if there's they might see a question and there's information is covered in a blue box.

29:49 Now, if they've done that in year 3 in India, for and in year five, when you're in year, six, it's that's almost an embedded behavior, and it's not as difficult for you to implement Now, it might be that if they haven't done that in year three and year four and you are five, he's probably not in your interest to do that. Yeah, well, yeah, being specific about well, these are the things that, as a, when I say, as a staff that we work on, this is how they'll be. Some obviously, some individual differences between teachers. But thinking if we do this together, the individual child will have a coherent experience and that would be my encouragement to schools, and it's both thinking this.

30:31 Is what we'll focus on and also causes thinking well this is what will not focus on. I think I can think of the ultimate example of hated I think I think of the safety of the night, I think of the exact maybe are you thinking about modeling? Yes, exactly. The same exactly the same for me and I know Dillards, there's like a see, you itching to go as well, but you to? Yeah, we're also Monica. I know what I'm thinking. I thinking trying to teach children while model who've never done it, but yeah, I've got a kind of, kind of funny story, actually, for you care about that. But bar modeling, I think is the ultimate example of When it's embedded over years, it could be a really, really effective tool in terms of visualization, of problems. But when it's one of those things that is just, you know, you're in es6 and the children have never seen it before and you try to tackle a year six level problem and you say, come on guys, this bar model at. So let's visualize this.

31:18 This problem from my experience of doing this, in many, many cohorts. They almost never understand it. They and they don't like using it and it's just nonsense to them because it's, like you said, if you're introducing the The red and the blue boxes really late in the game. It might not be in your best interest and and just a very quick funny story for you when I was going through the interview process to get my first teaching job, it was like the buzz thing around then is about 78 years ago and I went to a school and I got an interview and I thought I'm going to really wow this school. I'm going to impress them with my mass knowledge and I went into this year, five class and I had a 20-minute slot to teach this maths lesson so I decided to do some problem solving with bar modeling and it was the most disastrous lesson I've ever taught in my career.

32:11 And obviously, I didn't get the job, but it was, it was hilarious, you know, because they had not a clue, what I was talking about and they could not process, you know what I was trying to teach them in a 20-minute lesson, so I learned the hard way that so, basically just added another cognitive load this, you just wait, I don't know how to answer this question and I don't know what your business as an adult for me. I didn't have the cognitive load of solving the problem because it was easy for me, but the problem was already hard for them and I've just chucked in this other really hard concept. So yeah, that's my story. Let me just give you, I can't help but give you a little anecdote on that. So when we were trying to appoint a year for teacher and we had lots of teachers coming in to teach 20 minute lesson and there were the theme was, it has to be based on their topic which is World War Two.

32:59 And so it was with two classes. All these Only interviewees were teaching these two classes and I would say that 80% of them had an air raid siren, going and got the children going under the tables, and then they'd gotten to do something. Now, the children were absolutely rocking for about the first material lessons and then after there, had to go a cable, three or four times this air raid siren went off. No one was shocked, and they were like looking at another. The teachers here with first weather fortunate ones, but it was. So it was really, it was really hard watching this you know, prepared this lesson thought this is going to really hit the yeah, this is gonna wow them and they're like, oh boring already been bombed.

33:46 Four times this morning. Yeah. And I just wanted to touch on something. Gareth because it's something you've mentioned before as well. And its really interesting to us. And I don't want to jump the gun and presume exactly what this is about. But that you talk about the emotional ride of Would you mind a guy from mysen, how? It's a really unique lesson of, you know, you can feel Eureka moments. You can feel frustration that this kind of, in such a short amount of time and children struggle to control their emotions at the best of times. That's another thing they're learning to do throughout their journey through school and you mentioned this idea of concept cartoons or or I just love for you to go into some more detail about this. This thing you're working on at the moment. Yeah yeah I'm really excited about it and it's when I said I'm working on it it's really a thought that's been forming in my wife.

34:30 Mine for a while. It's just like, the best way to Manifest this, but the thing that I like, if I was to say, the two words that we often use to describe the emotions children experience in maths, I think that they would generally be anxiety and fun. And the thing that I kind of come to say, is that actually very, very rarely think maths, I would best describe as being fun. I don't think that's a word that like, I think, Matt. Invoke fantastically positive emotions and it can be really rich and we can have this kind of drive towards finding a solution, and we can feel like we might feel great excitement, but the kind of children's understanding of fun and is probably something a little bit lighter.

35:21 And and also, I think we can think of the, what we might call him. I wouldn't call them the negative emotions, but the uncomfortable emotions and actually children being able to Discerning between them and rather than we just label. Everything is being anxiety and actually see the value of them. So so for example, like every mathematician will need to be able to deal with frustration and actually frustration might be really helpful because it might drive us towards action and it might lead us to question our thoughts. And and and and looking at well how do we deal with that frustration like just frustration? Turn into apathy And actually noting that sometimes emotions will kind of up regulate us and and but sometimes they'll have the opposite effect and really wanting to help children to be able to recognize some of those different, some of those, the different emotions that that it can mask and bring up and specifically to be able to do.

36:23 So before the experience them is the number of times that a child may be in at a particular emotional state. That's Unhelpful for them, when they're engaging in maths. I find that trying to address that in that moment. Isn't that helpful? Whereas, if I have prepared them for some of the emotions that they may experience within when engaging in Mass, they might be better able to deal with them. And so, just like one other example, might be, if a child's attainment is high, they will may find it more difficult when they then encounter Challenge and they may become more More defensive than and it's trying to, I guess, show that like, all these emotions are totally human and normal.

37:10 And, and it's very understandable. We have them, like, we're social beings. The fact that we might feel embarrassment, so, embarrassments very different in frustration and lice awful if we feel embarrassed. You know, we're wired to come however, much I say, don't compare yourself to the person next year. I think children need to know, well, that actually biologically. Yeah, it's something that we do. And it's to feel bad about that. But just, you know, we need to be able to look at that thought and recognize that it's just the thought and trying to find a way, which is the thing I'm doing it. And which is this kind of thought, I've of concept cartoons, but trying to find a way to help children to navigate their emotions in, as it relates to mass.

37:54 I think, I think it's really important for them more, broadly. But I also think it's a really But Amendment thing to their success as a mathematician. And so yeah. So it's so similar. I'm looking into and what I Look to do, is, maybe create a few examples of put them out on social media or even when I get that. And then I just I love getting feedback from people saying I'm always looking for but suggest improvements as well. And like, rather than people just tell me what they like. Yeah. So yeah. So we're falling into that trap today which is like amazing. Yeah well but yeah, you're right. Well the things I absolutely loved. And still as the work with my, the school that was up for 12 years is how Challenge two-hander and like the headteacher.

38:39 Absolutely amazing guy. Amazing. Brain really determined really child centers and I know that I'm I'm challenged and it's it's worth its weight in gold. I really like the idea you got me thinking when you said about frustration in maths because it two things firstly. Absolutely right. Because when I see a child get frustrated, my natural instinct is to Sold him and I'm thinking, oh no I'm going to lose them now we lose them. Let's just make them feel better, you know, but actually, I love this idea of showing children, okay? Right. Frustration. You're on a pathway and you've got you stuck a fork in the road, isn't it? Almost you news? You mentioned apathy. It's like, okay, what other, what other ways could we go of this?

39:21 Maybe, maybe it becomes determination. And why does it have to be this negative root where you get it? You know, where you're just, always always the same thing where you just get may be upset. And then teachers will make Judgment. So know that child was gets upset. If it's too hard, so we won't give them to hard stuff because they just got upset and then they don't, then they can't do the task. So we always just give me a little bit easier stuff. So I really, really like that idea of exploring the emotional root of things have just showing children. Hey, these are normal, by the way, I feel like this II feel like this when this happens and when I deal with it in this way, this outcome is often the thing. And when I don't this is the outcome, you know? And just showing Them before it happens. I think that's a really good idea. I'll be very interested to see what you kind of create with that.

40:08 Yeah, and I'll tell you that the biggest, one of the biggest I've made a little so many mistakes for, I've learned things I read about something and think, my goodness have done that for had this many years and one of them and we should he wish I often refer to in it in this field is trying to tell children that mass will be fun today. Now, we know that when we enter into a learning apis, owed our brain In releases epinephrine is adrenaline for the brain, which is essentially a stress chemical. So learning biologically is uncomfortable. And at that time, I'm telling children have fun, mass is going to be and their physical experience. Isn't that? It is, it is anything other than that.

40:50 And actually, it's kind of understanding that, you know, the perseverance in the effort and the frustration is often the precursor to the if you like the place. The Motions that the, the pleasant emotions. And so, I like to challenge this idea of there, being negative and positive emotions, and also just the idea as I say, like I want rather than me trying to tell the children. Maths is fun and likely to experience, the, the kind of the if you like the all of the breadth of fantastic emotions we experience when were engaging in maths. But I always think that's more about the task decide.

41:31 Then it is about me trying to convince them that something's fun because actually also there's an element to which some of maths is repetitive and like I don't think I could convince child that learning that number bonds determine the Time. Saver fact, it's fun because I don't think it is but it is an important precursor to something else which will be rich for them. I think a really powerful thing that we kind of move unpicked through our conversation here. Is that there are just so many different aspects and ways that we have to approach maths. It's free. Be a really wholesome experience and like you said, you need to have and I love the idea of looking at it through the lens of emotion. Like you've just been saying of this part of mass might well be boring. Like you said, learn your times tables.

42:12 This Parts can be really frustrating. This part is going to be this emotion that emotion and equipping. The children to understand that. I think we'll put them in such a better place. To really attack these things and do them. Because, you know, we use time step rock star in our school. And the idea is the idea is and you're absolutely right here. Will say, oh, it's fun. You get to make an avatar and you You can go on and and coins and it's really fun for a lot of children, nearly all children. It's not fun. You get the odd child who goes on on their own, you know, does a million different million minutes a week of Times Table Rock Star? But I think that honest open discourse of the child does start with the kind of thing, you're trying to create here, which is actually teaching them, what the emotions are in the first place because there's going to be a disconnect otherwise and I think I'm really looking forward to seeing what you come up with because we can certainly Implement them and see how they're going on.

42:58 It's one of those things where I feel like I just need to kind of of sit in an empty room for a couple of weeks and and then fight come up with some examples and usually when I've got one or two and throw them out there and get some opinions on that and that's when balls rolling. But it's definitely a thing that I think that there is this ground to take with helping children to understand and be able to regulate their emotions. Certainly when they're doing maths. So Gareth a long time ago, as I said, you've you really inspired me as a fresh teacher to really, just think outside of the box with mass teaching and it was at a time, it was 2014-2015.

43:40 So it was at that really pivotal moment. When we had the new National curriculum come in and suddenly, everyone was moving away from their textbooks, where it was just kind of, like, Columns of a b, and c, and you do challenge by choice or you say great, you know, you're the most stable. So you do the Hard column and you do the Z column and we were moving away from that and you massively inspired me with your resources and with the training you pain to do things like, hey, you know, that I still remember the day, when you said you gave an example on the screen of showing hiding some information and getting the children to visualize a problem before, they then tackle the information. So that mean that was just one of many things if you were to speak to directly now to so some new teachers like myself back then, What would be?

44:26 This is gonna be a hard question for you, but what would it be? I guess, your advice for a really passionate fresh teacher who really wants to nail their maths teacher and be a better maths teacher. What would you say to them? Okay, there's so many little things and, and, and the thing I guess, before I answer that is, I would say, the people just to be and patient with themselves and because I am a kind of person, you know, I was I'm really driven and really passionate and things have gone wrong for me so often and it and that's part of the kind of experimentation with in teaching as well and children benefit from you experimenting.

45:07 And I think it kind of to that end I guess that I would say is that the teacher you are not a deliverer of a scheme and and what we want to be able to do is it's a fantastic to have a structure and that's really helpful and to have great resources and it's thinking about how do I Where do I take ownership of that? And how do I ensure that? What the children are telling me in their success and I am able to adapt to them and for that to take the form of, it might be within a lesson. I'm looking for a little checks for understanding and I would use the tools of you know, giving children individual thinking time looking at a little questions that I can, I can give that will that will check for understanding within a lesson and look at how I do.

45:54 That within a lesson, but also kind of looking over time and seeing the characteristics that children are building and where is it? I should place my emphasis. So when I take the structure that I work with in, how do I amend it? And how do I, how do I make that make that my own and I guess to some extent as well just and they've just a general encouragement. I give anyone in any subject is just to be open with the things that you're unsure of all finding difficult and and finding different opinions and I remember moving to one of my favorite examples that I give, I don't think it had. It makes my least favorite example. Again, was moving to U1 and finding my partner teacher, just delivering things much more effectively than I was.

46:37 And I was quite senior in my career then and actually, I just knew what I needed to do is I just need to go and have a look at what it looks like in there and and I think is to some extent it's that humility is well, that is it's really important. I think. Yeah, you nailed That and I think the, you sort of you said it mentioned earlier on than you went into more detail about you've made mistakes. You've made plenty of mistakes yourself and I think it's so important for people to hear that because I am definitely a sucker for the whole. Like, it's like the example of a Instagram versus reality and people always say that, don't know what you see on Instagram. Whatever it is, it's not really reality and I guess it's the same in teaching, you know, you might go to some incredible training and speed to some incredible people.

47:19 It doesn't mean they're not making any mistakes and it's definitely worth knowing that. So thank you. I wish I That early on. Because I definitely beat myself up too many times when one 1 lesson wasn't perfect, you know? And it's like it's fine. Then after you beat yourself up, I then came and beat you. Yeah, cuz I cuz you because you taught the lesson that I've ironed. Yeah, we were planning Partners when we first started off as well. So there was there was definitely an idea of competition here. Oh yeah. And we didn't, we didn't let each other, you know, have that kind of and looking back. We should have let us. Let us let sounds off a little bit every now and then because it's important and Gareth, it's been amazing advice and And you know, truly truly fantastic. I know you said, you like being challenged and not just praised. But I'm here to praise him because it's been such a nice chat and really appreciate you giving us your time.

48:05 And I do think that Hayden asked. If you had a story that you wanted to share of us that we often, ask anyone who comes on a podcast, to give us a little anecdote, from the time in teaching. It could be heartwarming. Finally, just interesting. Do you have them ready for us? Yeah, I do. And this again is something that I've done I've ever mentioned before but it is When so I'll goodness if I'm guessing the Year this is maybe 2012. Now I'd mention it beginning. The First Resource at ever created was called the mass apprenticeship and they were challenges that used to take a group of children. It's so it's used to give children a little assessment towards the end of the unit. And if they, some children might need additional the Judgment had made the time some children might benefit from having that additional time more, direct teacher time that they can get supported to go. Over some of the content and to address some of the misconceptions and we had some children that would go on to what we call the extension pathway which were the maths Apprentice tasks which are getting the first tasks that I ever published.

49:07 And so it might be what one task was around, ordering, a stock rotation system for a fruit stall and there was another one, in, racking my brains now, which was looking at some data from a football. Season and get providing some suggestions to manage. This is all kinds of different tasks that there was one, which was probably one of my favorites, which was designing and writing security codes for the MI5. So the children would have this this bespoke prompt and what they would then do is they would have to meet someone and communicate their thinking to that person. So, for example, I would go out the room normally or invite someone else and I would come back in dressed up As the stallholder guys.

49:58 And then the, but the children quite quickly fall into the narrative and they would have to communicate what they're suggesting. So I've been forgetting the name of the person from from a theme park manager. He was looking for a suggestion and then I'll come in as Alex. The stallholder, who was a bit? Didn't really understand his figures very well needed a bit of support, but then my favorite one and this was well before they kind of He's a zoom with coming in at for the MI5. Task was Skyping the class wearing a stage from the planning like the PPA room and the children having to give explaining that MI5 the security codes which was like they had to come up with something that we generate a four digit code using personal information and the date. So they would have to think of a way of doing and it always have to be 8 a 4 digit number and but the way they would always explain, as I say we would once a year we would Skyping. And then what they would always do is they would always try and run after the lesson to get the PPA room. But again that was probably one of it, one of us wheat. That is that that sorry that is the, you know, the epitome of me of to me of loving teaching and making those unbelievable experiences for the kids because Just going above and beyond and those and it wouldn't have taken much with it for you to put some shades on and go in the other

51:29 room, but those small choices, we can make you that those children will remember that the whole time. They'll always remember that. That's, that's amazing. But you said to me, and what would you think of when you think of English in my mind went blank and one little, it was always like a little jokes, the kids knew and I was really passionate about maths. And so when it was sad as that, you know, they would do the reading first and then they would do this bag. So we just come in like dressed normally and then All our team we used to get dressed up for mass. That means that's really funny. That might have worked less well if English wasn't first. Yeah. Okay.

52:10 Panicking when they came. It's fine. It's just English guys. No problem. That's so funny. I love that Gareth. It's been an absolute pleasure. I think we're going to round it off there. I can't believe how useful this has been you know. We're like we're misleads. Now, we've been teaching for upwards of ten years and we still got so much out of that chat. And I think the one thing we want from this is to be able to share with people who are less experienced potentially or even the same experienced and just realize that it's just a constant Learning Journey. And there's always something to think about and to develop on and you've shown that perfectly. So huge. Thank you for coming on go. Well thanks. I have really enjoyed it. So anytime, you know, deliberately if you'll ever having back at a lot to come with, thanks.

52:56 Wow, Dylan was an amazing chat. How do you feel after that? It's just it's one of those moments isn't it? You know, we spoke to Sophie recently. I finished that chat and I was just so, you know, enthused again and I just got the same feeling after talking to Gareth and I think it's such a positive thing to have because we got a lot of comments that we hate them. Start this podcast there. Oh gosh. Teaching a or, you know, and we were really worried about that we were given off that kind of Aura of the negative things, but you know that it's so true. What you said it just it. Excites you to listen to these people who are complete. Experts in what they do. And you know, it's no secret that we love maths and listening to him.

53:36 Talk about it. And I think what was really reassuring was two things for me. Maybe you can, you can expand on these. Number one was that he was just as open with, he gets things wrong constantly because there can be this or around these kind of personalities online that they're just these amazing people who get it right all the time. That's really, really put a really, really positive. I think a message to have for everyone positive. All other thing was positive aura. The second reveal to my second thing. Was the fact that he kind of was on the same page as us. I found that really positive as well and kind of, you know, giving us that kind of thumbs up to say, no, you are doing the right thing. You do think of it this way and you do know what you're doing and I got that from that as well. I personally felt that Beyond his Aura, we actually gave, we actually in all seriousness, we gained basically like a private CPD session because he was so full of knowledge and made Made me think so much about my own practice by the end of it. I was like in my own head kind of like I am at the end of a CPD session.

54:38 Professional development session. I know I do it all the time. Just say random jogging pedagogy pedagogy. Yeah, my pedagogy. I'm on dirt. That's not decile jargon. That's just me being a fool. Go back and listen to our previous episodes if you don't know, I'm talking about, but yeah, Gareth was incredible at just unpicking the questions we had and then just delivering some amazing like insights based on his experience and his Career obviously, in the, in the teaching world. So very, very grateful to have that conversation and it's definitely definitely going to impact the way I teach in my next lessons, this term hopefully even next year again because there are so many exciting things that he reminded me of of from you know, early on in my career. When I just had more time, maybe I guess to devote to certain things and I just, I miss doing them. I think one thing he said that I've definitely picked up on and it's on that theme of like it's okay to get things wrong but it's even more specific and it was that idea of individual schools were on different Journeys in their, in their kind of progress on different curriculums and the idea of you know, he's very fortunate to be able to just focus on maths. I think teachers beat themselves up a lot. I know I certainly do when I think you know, if I did just spend two more hours doing this thing. Then the this sequence of lessons may have been much more enjoyable or way more engaging but we just Just don't have that time because we're being pulled in five different directions and I think that idea that he had his very clear and I think it's really easy for people like Gareth people like ours. Even as mathletes in school to have a really narrow focus on our own subject and just think,

56:11 okay, I've had some CPD on this. I think this is going to be transformative for the school, have all the best of intentions but then end up actually inflicting, huge levels of workload stress and it being a negative outcome and people don't feel as enthused as you. And you think well why not and Obey. So answer is, it's just down to time, they're probably very, very, very up for having this professional development, but they just physically can't manage it. You're right. We all have our own passions and that what, you know, that was our passion and that's his passion, he can put that time in. So I think the kind of summary of his message. Is if you're passionate about a subject, just quit your job and then subjects all the time. I hope Gareth, I have, you know, how many joking?

56:51 Of course, I've got to tell you do something. Maybe we could talk about now quickly. It's just a thought on that because I thought at the time and it's something that's been thrown about in previous schools that I've worked in, as a genuine suggestion. As to the way of splitting up, your staff, is you find with teachers, a lot of the time just naturally, they fall on one side of the, of the wall Bay, they're either going to be preferring teaching maths or praying teaching English and that could be preference in terms of enjoyment or it could be preference in terms of how good they feel. They are at delivering that curriculum and the idea is trying about never went to any further and wonder if any schools anyone Thing has tried this before was the idea of splitting staff not just by year group and teaching math and English in the morning, but splitting staff through subject and you have some teachers who may be lower school, have maths first session and an upper school have mass second session and you'd get one teacher who would teach a math lesson, lot of school and after break t to math lessons in their in their upper school and then you'd also have like almost like a ped English teacher who had take the class at the opposite times for English. If they were more specialized in English or preferred English and you know as someone who naturally gravitates towards maths, my ears pricked up at that idea. And you think that maybe I'd be on the side of doing that but I tell you what I'm interested to see what you think. I don't think that that would necessarily be automatically beneficial for the children or for the staff to do that constantly throughout.

58:18 I don't know if it's really hard when I think it depends on your level of passion because I don't think many not many people are as passionate by know that we're on the extreme end of like passion. Laughs. And some people might just prefer it a little bit more, but two things I actually did that for a while. I don't know if you remember, it was a long time ago but it was only for a term or two. But I did actually do that where I taught maths further, the, in the place before the time before break. And then I went to a different year group and I taught maths again in after break time, and I thoroughly enjoyed it personally like doing that. And I also know someone who did it for a year, a different school. They went and only taught Maths for a whole year. And they said they absolutely loved it, but they also said, they felt really these Guild coming back to a normal normal environment and teaching at the other subjects, and in the long term, it wasn't remotely beneficial but it was an enjoyable time while it lasted.

59:10 So, you know, pros and cons. I guess, I suppose, that's the point. I guess that, if you are going to continue being a classroom teacher over you, if you don't necessarily have the ability to stop what you're doing and put all your time to mass because someone has driven as Gareth is so successful, he's able Do that then there is that risk isn't there actually, you know, well, you know it, what is the reason that you're less passionate about English? I actually thoroughly enjoy teaching English as well. I'm just so passionate about maths at this kind of a disparity there. Some might say, but I still love teaching English and there's a lot I get out of teaching English, but if I was to stop doing that completely, I'm not sure that I'd be a better teacher for it and I'm going to continue being a teacher. Now, if I was to become a specialist and just focus on math resources, then maybe that doesn't matter as much, but I think potentially that that It wouldn't be a positive for someone who especially let's say I move school at some point and they don't offer that.

1:00:02 Yeah, it'll be really stuck in a in a place there of Old English I've not done this for five years, you know. Well we see this in peed on me all the time. It's quite a quite a common thing that schools will wiring like PE coordinators and coaches and teams and things. So to run their PE curriculum. Essentially and then teachers of those schools go and get another job Five, Ten Years Later where they have to teach PE twice a week and they have absolutely no idea how and there's always this dialogue, isn't there of We should be really, really careful. Not to descale ourselves for a, like, a temporary convenience, or is just a convenience at the school because you just don't know what's going to be required of you later on. And if that is a general requirement, that, you teach, but if that's like part of the job, which it is teaching English, teaching PE is generally considered part of the job than you probably should be careful to take cot.

1:00:49 Like I really bespoke role at the school. You work in where you don't teach particular subjects just in case, you know, but it was in different. Positions, you might be confident that that's that's all you're going to do till you retire. There's no, there's no risk there, but like you said, if you're going to if you just, you just plan on being a teacher, you never know if you're descaling yourself and like Gareth touched on. Actually, without those opportunities for him to just focus on maths, he would not have nearly enough time to dive into those kind of deep-rooted problem solving and and think about ways to help teachers on the macro level. So, it is double edged sword. I don't think there's an answer here. I think you've got to do what's right for you. And, you know, It's going to be one of our class discussions here. We don't really fall on one side. We just say, well there's it, yeah, it's very interesting. Yeah, I'm not sure not sure where I fall on that. You know what?

1:01:36 Those one question we didn't ask Gareth and I wish we had time, we had to get it back on. We're gonna have to gain back on one day in the future because I really wanted to ask Gareth about his opinions on Russia. Soon. Acts kind of Bill other. There's a bill or move towards making everyone do Master till they're 18. That's right, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. That's that was in the news recently. And that was, that was a big out. Quite it's, it was such a weird one for me. I don't about you hate him because my gut instinct, when I heard that was, I feel like there is a lot of math anxiety in the adult population. I feel like a lot of people are way more accepting that. Oh, I don't do maths in a way that we never see for reading you. Let's see, we're going around saying, no, I don't read.

1:02:17 There's a, there's a stigma around not being able to read being illiterate and we need to help those people as much as possible. But we do get more that people. I'll tend to get more embarrassment from saying they can't read. Whereas when it comes to mass it's sometimes worn as a bad. Oh, I don't do numbers me. And that anything that can kind of help that attitude, we saw it during during the lockdown, sand and covid. And things, the statistics that were brought out daily. There are people who just kind of didn't really understand what they were looking at, because they never had to, you know, progress day am sorry digest data in such huge amounts. They lie and they relied on people interpreting it for them. And I think there's There's a lot to be said for people being helped in maths more does making it compulsory until 18 solve that problem. I don't think it should also solves the problem bit. Better Garrus idea of teaching children and young adults about the emotional side of mass.

1:03:08 I reducing that anxiety by tackling it in a different way. I think our country is obsessed with do more. More is better. That is like the approach to a lot of things is like do do more people don't like maths can't do math, do more. It's like yeah you know it is a A bit deeper than that. So my gut reaction was is, was was like that's a stupid idea. Stupid idea. Making people do masturbating like, yeah, if someone's got to 16 and they hate math and can't do it, and they've just got kind of completely detach themselves from it, is putting them through two more years of that going to be highly beneficial. I think, like everything ever, we have to go back to the root cause and not to get political, but to get political because we like to do that. Sometimes you do I feel like it's another Band-Aid rather than a cause of the root problem. You know, this huge problem in retains retaining teachers and and recruiting them, okay?

1:03:57 We'll put the starting salary up a bit. Okay. Does that help retention? No. You know, they said it's another sticky plaster on something rather than getting to the root cause of actually trying to fix it and I think you're right and I think what Garrison's? Right is the further back you go and start to earlier on actually that path then doesn't have to be longer. It can be shorter but it's a better path to be on in the first place. Yeah. Well luckily rishi's a listener and Avid listener actually of our podcast as could all Your friends be if you share this podcast with a with your buddies, I just saying oh is that good? Is that good thing? Was that was that was good. Yes it's something Hayden. Listen we've read, we read the guides. We have to say as much as possible you know it's cringy but yeah I love that. That's really good and you know we are on Twitter now so you could retweet. It will experience.

1:04:44 They're gonna love this chair. That we've just had guys. I've got what I've got. Hey guys, we want you to retweet. This if you like teaching spoken, like a spoken, like a true man, who uses Twitter and definitely isn't Wing. It marketing 101, guys, thank you so much for listening. Hope you found that as useful and amazing as we did and we'll catch you next time.