https://substack.com/@dremanuele/p-188163461

https://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/54490/1/23.pdf

https://tipsforteachers.co.uk/non-examples/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tips-Teachers-ideas-improve-teaching/dp/1915261473?crid=3RD1J810UH72C&keywords=barton+tips+for+teachers&qid=1671524778&sprefix=barton+tips+for+teachers,aps,99&sr=8-1&linkCode=sl1&tag=mrbartonmaths-21&linkId=70e543759e5fb61eab4fa1e86406ce12&language=en_GB&ref_=as_li_ss_tl

https://gemini.google.com/gem/1gft7Ou8EbFRVYsvgjgzLQKmoRPCxJoYT?usp=sharing

https://gemini.google.com/gem/1gft7Ou8EbFRVYsvgjgzLQKmoRPCxJoYT?usp=sharing

https://geminiedudremanuele.netlify.app/

https://substack.com/@peterm8/p-18926648

Sequence examples:

https://sites.google.com/view/expanding-bracketsnpppn/home

https://sites.google.com/view/lineargraphs/home

In this fourth episode of my series Training for Teachers, we are tackling a cornerstone of modern pedagogy: Retrieval Practice.

Welcome back to the Training for Teachers series.

If you are just joining us, this series is a chronological walkthrough of my “perfect” lesson structure, refined over 11 years of teaching and research. In Part 1, we looked at the entrance and the first 2-3 minutes. In Part 2, we dismantled the “Do Now” and how to use interleaving to strengthen long-term…

* https://substack.com/@dremanuele/p-184882666

* https://substack.com/@dremanuele/p-185727014

* https://gemini.google.com/gem/1qX_qMaNCrOf8eQ_H3G2Iv-3eUmGLyM-8?usp=sharing

* https://geminiedudremanuele.netlify.app/

* https://substack.com/@kristopherboulton/p-163196764

* Act as an ‘HTML creator’, ‘Lesson Creator’, ‘Worksheet Creator’, and mathematics expert. Your primary goal is to design comprehensive, interactive mathematics lessons delivered as single-page HTML applications. Deliver the whole lesson step by step, adding sections singularly based on the chat prompt instructions.

Purpose and Goals:

* Generate structured math lessons including Retrieval, ‘I Do, We Do, You Do’ cycles, Main Worksheets, and Plenaries.

* Deliver content using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with MathJax for professional mathematical typesetting.

* Ensure accessibility and classroom utility through specific design choices.

Behaviors and Rules:

1) Lesson Structure and Content:

a) Retrieval: Create 7 distinct sections, each featuring a single question based on requested skills.

b) Turn and Talk: Design a section for student discussion. Include a template with rules such as: 1. Everybody contributes, 2. Build on each other’s ideas, 3. Give reasons for points of view, 4. Show respectful listening, 5. Ask questions to clarify, 6. Respectfully challenge ideas, 7. Include everyone, 8. See different perspectives, 9. Share partial thinking.

c) Learning Cycle:

- ‘I Do’: Create one section with one question, an interactive pen feature, and working space.

- ‘We Do’: Create one section with a similar question to ‘I Do’ for guided practice.

- ‘You Do’: Create 7 sections, each containing one question designed for mini-whiteboard work.

d) Main Worksheet: Generate a 3x6 grid of 18 questions with logical difficulty progression.

e) Plenary: Create a final section with a concluding question or cycle as specified in the prompt.

2) Layout and Technical Specifications:

a) Viewport Optimization: Content must fit a single laptop viewport to avoid scrolling. Use large fonts suitable for classroom projection.

b) Aesthetics and Accessibility: Use a modern design. The background color for all interactive areas must be buff (#F0DC82) to support accessibility.

c) Controls and Rendering: Include a ‘Full Screen’ button. Use MathJax for all mathematical expressions to ensure professional typesetting.

3) Interactivity and Stability:

a) Answer Management: All questions must be clickable to toggle (show/hide) answers.

b) Layout Stability: Ensure the layout remains stable and does not jump when answers are revealed.

c) Referencing: Maintain consistent numbering and labeling across all sections.

4) Accuracy and Customization:

a) Topic Alignment: Tailor all problems and examples to the specified topic (e.g., ‘Quadratic Equations’) and student level (e.g., ‘Year 10’).

b) Mathematical Precision: Ensure absolute accuracy in all calculations, formulas, and solutions.

Overall Tone:

* Professional, pedagogical, and precise.

* Efficient and focused on classroom utility.

* Encouraging and supportive of diverse learning needs.

Resources mentioned in the episode:

* https://substack.com/home/post/p-163196764

* https://substack.com/@dremanuele/p-179728197

* https://www.overleaf.com/

* https://substack.com/home/post/p-184065643

* “Act as a ‘Webpages creator’ specialized in mathematics education. Your primary role is to design and build interactive, high-quality educational worksheets for classroom use.

Purpose and Goals:

* Act as a mathematics expert specialized in creating interactive, high-quality educational worksheets.

* Generate grids of math questions (e.g., 18 total, 3 columns, 6 rows) based on a user-provided topic and difficulty level.

* Ensure questions follow a logical progression, gradually increasing in difficulty.

* Deliver the worksheet as a single-page interactive application using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, with MathJax for professional mathematical typesetting.

Behaviors and Rules:

1) Layout and Design:

- Organize questions in a grid format defined by the user (defaulting to 3 columns and 6 rows if not specified).

- Ensure all content fits within a single laptop screen (viewport-optimized) to avoid scrolling.

- Use a modern, simple, and colorful aesthetic that avoids cognitive overload for students.

- Choose large, clear font sizes suitable for projection on a classroom board.

- Include a ‘Full Screen’ button to maximize the worksheet area.

- Use a background that is buff (#F0DC82) so students with visual impairments or dyslexia can see clearly.

- Use MathJax to render all mathematical expressions clearly.

2) Interactivity:

- Each question box must be clickable to toggle the display of the answer.

- When an answer is revealed, the layout must remain stable; both the question and answer must fit within the original box size without expanding the grid or causing screen overflow.

- Maintain numbering for all questions for easy reference.

3) Content Generation:

- Use the user’s input regarding topic (e.g., ‘Quadratic Equations’), level (e.g., ‘Year 10’), and quantity to generate the specific math problems.

- Ensure mathematical accuracy in both questions and solutions.

- Prioritise clarity and logical progression in problem difficulty.

Overall Tone:

- Professional, pedagogical, and precise.

- Efficient and focused on classroom utility.

- Encouraging and supportive of diverse learning needs.”

Welcome to the third post of my new series, Training for Teachers.

If you are new here, this series is where I open up my planning books. I share the evidence-based practices that underpin my teaching, drawing from research giants and contemporary thought leaders, and then I add “my touch.”, the specific way I implement the theory in my classroom with my…

I have long campaigned for the idea that schools should provide high-quality, pre-planned resources. Teachers should be freed up to focus on the art of teaching, the delivery, the relationships, the responsive coaching, rather than spending their evenings reinventing/improving the wheel on a PowerPoint slide.

The burden of resource creation is driving trainee teachers to quit before they start being teachers and pushing experienced educators out of the profession. We are losing great people because the workload mathematics just doesn’t add up.

Inspired by the work of experts like Craig Barton (whose Tips for Teachers and Mr Barton Maths podcasts are essentials), I have been on a mission to streamline my workflow. I wanted to see if AI could be the lever that finally fixes the planning burden.

Over the last year, I have been experimenting with a hybrid workflow: combining rigorous pedagogical research with the power of Google Gemini.

Here is the update on my journey so far, the wins, the “not-yets,” and the tools you can use today.

Step 1: The Foundation (Atomisation)

It all started last year when I discovered the concept of Atomisation, pioneered by Kristopher Boulton (CEO of Unstoppable Learning).

If you aren’t following Kris on Substack or reading his work, you should be. The premise is breaking down complex learning objectives into their smallest, accessible “atoms” that can be chained.

This approach changed my teaching. It allowed me to create lesson sequences where lower-attaining students could make the same progress as high-attainers, simply because the scaffold was so precise. However, doing this manually is cognitively demanding. It takes time to break a concept down that finely. I needed a way to speed this up without losing the quality.

Step 2: The “Gemini Gem”

This was the game-changer. I realised that while AI struggles with “creativity,” it excels at “structure.”

I created a custom Gemini Gem (a custom version of the AI) specifically trained on Boulton’s principles of Atomisation. I fed it the pedagogical rules, and suddenly, I could input a topic, and the AI would do the heavy lifting of breaking it down for me.

Note: I have made this Gem available for free. You can click the link at the bottom of this post to try it out.

Step 3: From Atoms to Lesson Plans

Once the AI could “atomise,” the natural next step was the lesson plan.

I upgraded the Gem. Now, I don’t just ask for the atoms; I ask for a full lesson architecture. I prompted the AI to generate:

* Teacher scripts (for explicit instruction).

* Detailed activities based on the atoms.

* Plenaries.

This works brilliantly. It removes the “blank page syndrome” and provides a rigorous pedagogical skeleton for the lesson in seconds.

Step 4: The Revelation (The “Slide Deck” Wall)

Here is where I hit a roadblock.

My ultimate dream was to have the AI take that text-based lesson plan and automatically generate my Google Slides, using my specific school templates.

I know this is possible. I have seen brilliant colleagues and coding experts share methods using Marp or specific AI plugins to generate slides. I tried several of these workflows.

My honest verdict? Right now, for me, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

I found that debugging the code or tweaking the AI-generated slides took just as long, if not longer, than making the slides manually. Teaching is a visual medium, and AI currently struggles to lay out visual information as intuitively as a human can.

I have decided to pause on automating slides. And that is okay. It’s not a failure; it’s a pivot. I am sticking to manual slide creation for now, knowing that high-quality slides are reusable assets that I only have to build once.

Step 5: The Breakthrough (Worksheets & HTML)

Since slides were too time-consuming to automate, I turned my attention to independent practice.

This has been a massive success.

I started by asking my Gemini Gem to write code for LaTeX (a typesetting system used for high-quality math and science documents). I can paste this code into an editor like Overleaf, and it generates professional, textbook-quality PDF worksheets instantly. I can ask Gemini to “make Q4 harder” or “add a scaffold to Q2,” and it rewrites the code in seconds.

But the real leap forward came recently, inspired by a Substack post from Harry Zafar.

Harry shared a method for creating HTML worksheets. Instead of a static PDF, the AI writes a simple webpage.

* It looks clean and organised.

* It can be opened in any browser.

* Crucially, you can code it so that answers are revealed when students (or the teacher) click on the question.

Harry also detailed how to use this for Checking for Understanding, generating specific questions for Mini-Whiteboard sessions.

Where I am now

I have a workflow that works:

* AI handles the cognitive heavy lifting (Atomisation and Planning).

* I handle the visual storytelling (Slides).

* AI & Code handle the resource generation (HTML/LaTeX Worksheets).

This is the most sustainable my workload has felt in years.

If you want to try the Gemini Gem I built for Atomisation, click this link. And if you’re interested in a tutorial on the HTML worksheets, let me know in the comments or join the subscriber chat!

I wanted to be the cinematic hero who stands on the desk, cracks the best jokes, and wins over the toughest class through sheer charisma. I wanted the montage ending where the students who gave me the most grief suddenly realised I was their savior. I thought that if I was “cool,” learning would happen by osmosis.

It didn’t take long for reality to crash that party.

After 11 years in this profession, examining research and refining my craft, I’ve realised a hard truth: Kids don’t eventually love the “cool” teacher. They love the teacher who is consistent. They respect the teacher who is supportive, caring, and strict when necessary. They find safety in the teacher who might be “boring” by Netflix standards, but who is a rock-solid presence in their chaotic, sometimes horrible, lives.

I learned that being a professional means accepting that some students might never “love” me. They might even claim to hate me. And that is okay. As long as I can offer them a fresh start every single morning, treating them with the same unconditional positive regard I give to all my students.

The Rise of the “Entertainer Teacher”

However, as I moved away from trying to be the cool guy, I began to notice a distinct category of colleagues: The Entertainers.

I want to be clear: I am not judging their commitment. These teachers work incredibly hard. They care deeply about their students and want them to enjoy school. But their philosophy relies heavily on the idea that for a lesson to be “good,” it must be “fun.”

You know the lessons I mean. They involve playing relaxing music during independent practice to “set the vibe.” They end every session with a high-stakes game or quiz. They spend hours designing worksheets where students have to solve four simultaneous equations to discover who stole Pirate John’s diamonds. They are the first to switch to “Christmas Mode” in December and “Easter Mode” one week before the break.

On the surface, this looks like great teaching. The kids are smiling. The teacher is exhausted but happy. But there is a hidden cost to this approach, a ripple effect that damages the school culture and, ironically, hurts student learning in the long run.

The “Indirect Knowledge Gap”

The problem isn’t the fun itself; it’s the expectation it sets.

When students are fed a diet of entertainment-first pedagogy, they start to believe that learning is synonymous with being entertained. They begin to view the classroom not as a place of hard work and reward, but as a venue for passive enjoyment.

This creates what I call the Indirect Knowledge Gap.

Here is how it happens: A student leaves the “Entertainer’s” class, where they just listened to music and solved a mystery, and walks into the next lesson. This next teacher (perhaps me, or perhaps you) believes in a different philosophy. We believe that satisfaction comes from hard thinking, not gimmicks. We believe in the quiet hum of industry, the focus of deliberate practice, and the commitment to learning for learning’s sake.

But because the student has been conditioned to expect a show, they feel “tricked” by the work. They become resentful.

* “Why can’t we listen to music?”

* “Why is this boring?”

* “Why aren’t we doing a Christmas quiz?”

Because they feel deprived of the “fun,” they disengage. They stop working. Their behaviour deteriorates. The “boring” teacher now has to spend valuable learning time managing behaviour spikes triggered by the previous lesson’s lack of boundaries. The result? The students learn less in the “boring” subjects. This effect gets even worse when the class is shared with the entertainer teacher.

The gap in their knowledge isn’t caused by the strict teacher’s method; it is accidentally triggered by the contrast with the entertainer teacher.

The Team Player Mindset

We have to ask ourselves: Is my teaching style sustainable for the whole school, or just for me?

The “Entertainer” model can create a spiral of behaviour issues for colleagues. It increases the extraneous cognitive load for students, who are now focusing on the music or the game rather than the core curriculum. And ultimately, it creates a culture where “hard work” is framed as a punishment rather than a path to mastery.

So, what is the solution? Must the “Entertainer” crush their spirit and become a robot?

Absolutely not. We need personality in the classroom. We need humour. But, like everything in education, we need a middle ground.

We need to teach with a Team Player Mindset.

Before you put on that playlist or plan that holiday-themed lesson, think about your colleagues down the hall.

* If the school policy is “no music,” don’t be the one undermining it to be the favourite.

* If you know your colleague next door is struggling with a tough class, don’t send them over hyped up on sugar and games.

* Maybe save the “Pirate John” mystery for a special occasion and use a clear, traditional worksheet that focuses on the maths, allowing the students to feel the success of solving the problem itself.

We are not independent contractors running our own little variety shows. We are a faculty. We are a team. When we align our expectations, valuing focus, respect, and hard work we create an environment where students feel safe to learn, not just entertained.

You can still be you. You can still joke. But let’s make sure our desire to be loved doesn’t come at the expense of our colleagues’ sanity or our students’ long-term success.

Hello everyone, and happy new year! Welcome back to my new series, Training for Teachers.

In my first post, we looked at the preparation before the lesson even begins. Now, I want to take you through that crucial threshold moment: the students have arrived, they are in their seats, and the lesson is officially live.

This specific window of time, the first…

In my nearly 11 years of teaching, I’ve worn many hats: trainee, visitor, supply teacher, and established faculty member. These roles gave me the privilege of observing a vast array of classrooms and teachers, particularly in mathematics. This exposure was a crash course in pedagogy; I witnessed incredible strategies that shaped the teacher I am today. However, observation is also a lesson in what not to do. It honed my critical eye, helping me identify practices that, while popular, often fail to serve my students in the long run.

Today, I want to tackle a specific trend I’ve noticed, especially when teachers approach complex topics with lower-attaining students. While my focus here is mathematics, this applies to any subject where “hacks” are used.

I’m talking about pedagogical shortcuts, tricks designed to help students get to the right answer without necessarily understanding the journey. I want to explore why these hacks are not actually shortcuts to understanding, but rather arbitrary “games” with rules that must be memorised rather than understood.

The Exhibit: The “Butterfly Method”

Let’s look at a classic example: the “Butterfly Method” for adding and subtracting fractions. (I’ve included a visualisation below, generated by my AI assistant, Gemini. I admit, I had to force the AI to make it look like a butterfly, it’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it?)

The method is simple on the surface: cross-multiply the numerators and denominators to get your new top numbers, multiply the denominators for the bottom number, and you’re done. It’s fast, and it gets the answer.

The Problem: Logic vs. Memory

So, what is “wrong” with a method that yields the correct answer? The issue lies in two fundamental questions: What is the logic? and How is it retained?

If you treat maths like a board game, you follow the instructions on the box. You don’t need to know why you move three spaces; you just do it because the rules say so. The Butterfly Method is exactly like that. There is no inherent logic presented to the student regarding why they are cross-multiplying. It is a sterile memory exercise.

This leads directly to the retention problem. Without the anchor of logic (”the why”), the method becomes just one more arbitrary rule in a sea of academic content. Unless a student practices this specific trick every single week, which is impossible given the breadth of our curriculum, they will eventually forget the steps. And because they don’t understand the underlying concept of common denominators, they cannot reconstruct the method once the memory fades.

The Engagement Trap

Now, some might argue: “But this method makes maths feel like a game! Students are having fun, and their engagement is high because they are successfully ‘playing the game’.”

I understand this perspective. In my career, I have fallen into this trap myself, and yes, I do believe it is a trap. We often mistake busy work or “gamified” compliance for actual learning. If you have ever been tempted to prioritise this type of engagement over deep understanding, I highly recommend reading the post “Why I Want to Be the Most Boring Teacher in the Building” by SOL IN THE WILD. It answers this dilemma far better than I can, and it is a must-read for anyone wrestling with this topic.

Conclusion: Building “Chained Atoms”

I want to be clear: if you are a teacher currently using this method, please do not feel judged. We do the best we can with the tools we have. My goal is simply to encourage us to move away from fragile memory games and towards robust, logical teaching.

We should aim to teach methods that are like a set of chained atoms. If a student understands the first concept (the logic), they can pull the chain and recall the rest. They don’t need to memorise a trick; they just need to think hard about the math.

Let’s work together to make lesson planning about building these logical chains, making learning sustainable for students and teaching more rewarding for us.

In this new series, I want to “deep dive” into the specific mechanics of teaching, the microscopic lesson moves that determine whether a lesson flies or flops. We often talk about the big picture, but every teacher knows that the devil is in the details.

Today, we are tackling the most critical moment of the hour: The Entry and the Starter, also called t…

In my training placement, my mentor decided to treat every lesson I was teaching as an official observation, complete with a formal grading sheet. While other trainees faced this every two or three weeks, my mentor decided every single one of my lessons would be graded using the four-point scale: Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement, or Inadequate.

Despite my sleepless nights planning and reflecting, the vast majority of my lessons were graded ‘Requires Improvement.’ Though I never hit ‘Inadequate’ and occasionally reached ‘Good,’ I spent most of that crucial year feeling judged and, to be frank, like I wasn’t good enough.

This experience brings me to a fundamental question: Is grading lessons (and, by extension, the teacher) a good thing?

The Nonsense of the ‘Outstanding’ Lesson

The very concept of grading a single lesson is flawed, particularly when using terms like ‘Outstanding’ or ‘Requires Improvement.’

Think about it:

* Is any lesson truly ‘Outstanding’? Considering that teaching is a complex craft, there is always room for improvement, like a clearer explanation, a more precise check for understanding, a more effective use of wait time. If an ‘Outstanding’ lesson can still be improved, doesn’t that inherently mean it ‘Requires Improvement’ in some respect? The labels immediately break down under scrutiny.

* The Problem of Context: A 60-minute snapshot of a teacher managing a highly complex concept with a challenging class is reduced to a single word. This grade carries zero context about the teacher’s long-term planning, their mastery of instructional atoms, or their relationships with the students.

Thankfully, the formal four-point grading scale for trainee observations has largely been abandoned in recent years, definitely a huge, positive step forward. But the idea of grading is still stubbornly embedded in observation culture.

Grading Destroys the Positivity of Feedback

While grading is necessary and inevitable in certain areas, like GCSE or A-Level results, where it serves to reward achievement and motivate future effort, it is wholly counterproductive in teacher development.

Here is the core reason why: When you grade, you ruin the positivity of the process and shift the focus from growth to judgment.

In too many schools, a mentor provides excellent, supportive, constructive feedback, but then ruins the entire process by adding a grade or a judgmental label.

Example: You observe a teacher and give rich, helpful feedback on their support of Special Educational Needs (SEN) students, outlining what went well and two specific ways it could be even better. If you then conclude with a label like ‘Developing Skill’ or ‘Approaching Competence,’ you send a clear, negative message: “You are not good enough at supporting SEN students, yet.”

This grade is often too harsh and potentially untrue, as it’s based on a single moment in a single lesson. The grade oversimplifies the complexity of the feedback, turning a constructive conversation into a harsh final verdict.

The Call to Action: Provide Feedback, Not Verdicts

We need to completely abolish the practice of grading lesson observations in any way. It doesn’t matter if you stop using numbers and switch to kinder, less judgmental words. The act of assigning a label remains a negative judgment that breeds anxiety and defensiveness.

The Fix is Simple:

* Stop Grading the Teacher: Stop assigning overall lesson grades.

* Stop Grading the Aspects: Stop assigning grades or judgmental labels (like ‘Developing’ or ‘Mastering’) to individual categories within the feedback form (e.g., ‘Behaviour Management,’ ‘Checking for Understanding’).

* Focus Solely on Specific, Actionable Feedback: Stick to pure, descriptive feedback: What was observed, why it was effective, and one or two precise, high-leverage actions (or atoms) the teacher can practice next. Even better if you model the actual action with the teacher in a well structured rehearsal

This transforms the observation from a performance review into a coaching session, making the process one of collaboration and development rather than anxiety and judgment.

This helps me tailor my pacing and engagement strategies. But sometimes, despite all the planning, you walk into what I call “The Perfect Storm.”

I wrote about this in a previous post, describing that specific class where negative factors align to crush the learning environment: too many friends in one room, complex behavioral needs, gang attitudes against the teacher, or a collective history of failing your subject.

Today, I want to talk about the hardest consequence of the “Perfect Storm” class: The pressure to teach content when the students aren’t ready to receive it.

Behaviour is a Curriculum

We all know the adage: Without behaviour, there is no learning.

Yet, we often treat behaviour as something that should just “happen,” rather than something that must be taught. If you are struggling with a difficult class, I highly recommend The Classroom Management Handbook: A practical blueprint for engagement and behaviour in your classroom and beyond, by Ollie Lovell and Mark Dowley.

Their principle is simple but profound: Behaviour is a subject like any other. It must be taught explicitly, following a “scheme of learning” (your school’s behavior policy). If the students are not taught how to behave, how can we expect them to do it?

To understand why this is so critical, you have to look at the Hierarchy of a Good Learning Environment. I break it down into five non-negotiable priorities:

* Behaviour (The Foundation)

* Listening

* Understanding

* Good work in books

* Homework and Independent Practice

The logic here is ruthless. Without priority #1, you cannot have #2. Without the first and the second, you cannot have the third, and so on.

If you are teaching a “Perfect Storm” class, your class is often stuck at step #1. This means you have to accept a hard truth: You will lose curriculum time to behaviour time. If you don’t, the consequences can be really bad.

The Trap of the “Scheme of Learning”

In the past, when I was an NQT (now ECT), I didn’t understand that hierarchy. I found myself in the stressful situation of trying to force priority #2 and #3 (Listening, Understanding) when we hadn’t achieved priority #1 (Behaviour).

I remember sitting with my mentor, looking at a disastrous lesson. I had planned it carefully. The worksheets were scaffolded; the activities were engaging. But the students had no idea what to do.

Why? Because they weren’t listening so weren’t learning. And they weren’t listening because the behaviour wasn’t there. Even the students who wanted to listen couldn’t, due to the disruptions of their peers.

I felt like I was failing because I wasn’t “getting through the content.” I felt forced to plow ahead because the calendar said we had to be on Unit 3, even though the class hadn’t mastered Unit 1. The result was chaos.

The Epiphany

A colleague eventually gave me the advice that saved my career:

“If you think your students are not ready for a topic, simply don’t teach it.”

It frustrates me that school leaders rarely tell us this, and this seems more like a secret rule no one talks about. They often seem to prioritise pace over understanding. But as Dahuzi wrote in this excellent Substack post:

“When the foundations aren’t there, the bravest thing you can do is stop, rebuild, and trust that the slow route is the fastest route in disguise.”

Be Brave: The Solution

My advice for handling the “Perfect Storm” class is to trust your gut.

Don’t feel forced to teach something just because a document says so.

If you push a class too fast, you get the worst of both worlds:

* They don’t learn the new topic (because they are misbehaving or lack foundations).

* They don’t learn behaviour (because you are too busy trying to teach content).

* You burn out.

Instead, be brave enough to tweak the Scheme of Learning. Push the teaching only to the limit your class can hold, then stop. If they need to spend two weeks relearning the basics of the previous year, do it. Talk to your head of department, explain the situation and, if you are in a school that takes care of its students and teachers, I am sure they will understand and approve.

“But what about the assessment?”

I know what you’re thinking. If I skip topics, they will fail the common assessment. I’ll look like a bad teacher.

Please, stop thinking that. Look at the alternative.

If you plow through the curriculum with a disruptive class, they will still fail the assessment because they weren’t listening, or they didn’t understand the foundational concepts. But in that scenario, everyone is miserable.

The Alternative Strategy: By swapping a complex topic for a basic one, or by pausing content to nail down behavior, you achieve something valuable:

* Solid Learning: What you did teach, they actually learned.

* Better Environment: Students who want to learn can finally hear you.

* Respect: In the long run, students appreciate a teacher who ensures they understand the work rather than one who leaves them behind.

Yes, they might leave some questions blank on the test. But I assure you, the alternative, a chaotic room where nothing is learned and everyone is stressed, is definitely worse.

Be objective. Trust your guts. Teach the students in front of you, not the plan on your desk.

But here is the thing about AI: it moves fast. Since that post, the arrival of Gemini 3.0 combined with the continuous “feeding” of my research documents into the system has improved the Gem’s performance. The quality of the atomisation and the structural logic for lesson slides has jumped to a new level.

I want to share a practical example from last night to show you how to unlock 100% of this tool’s potential because until yesterday, even I wasn’t using it to its full capacity!

The Challenge: Year 9 Algebra & Cognitive Load

I needed to plan a lesson for my Year 9 class on changing the subject of a formula. We all know this is a vast topic. The sheer variety of question types can easily lead to cognitive overload, which is exactly why we revisit it in Year 10 and 11, too.

I wanted to apply a strict constraint to manage the intrinsic load. I didn’t want a generic “rearranging” lesson. I wanted my students to master one specific structure by the end of the hour:

Make x the subject of the formula: y=9x+3b

I asked my Gem to plan the lesson with this precise constraint, typing in that exact question as the “exit ticket” standard.

The Result: Pedagogical Precision

The output was brilliant. The atomisation was complete, giving me a structure that fit perfectly into my slide template. But the Gem went further than just “planning”:

* It scripted the explanation: It suggested specific language to scaffold the learning, such as distinguishing between the “loose” term (the +3b that must be moved first) and the “attached” term (the coefficient of x to be dealt with last). This is exactly the kind of explicit instruction that clears up misconceptions before they happen.

* It generated the perfect question set: Usually, I have to trawl through three or four websites to find a bank of questions that matches exactly the mechanics of my model. The Gem generated a bespoke list of practice questions based precisely on the y=9ax+3b structure.

The Game Changer: The “Dylan Wiliam” Worksheet Hack

This brings me to the next breakthrough. Previously, creating a worksheet meant snipping images from the Gem chat thread (messy) or typing them out manually (slow).

Yesterday, I saw a post from Dylan Wiliam sharing a Gemini Gem that writes LaTeX code to generate worksheets via Overleaf. It was a lightbulb moment.

I went back to my Gem and asked: “Can you generate the LaTeX code for a worksheet based on these questions?”

And it worked.

I copied the code, pasted it into Overleaf, and voila: a professional, textbook-quality worksheet appeared. No formatting nightmares. No snipping tool.

The takeaway: The Gem I shared with you isn’t just a lesson planner. It is a worksheet generator. Don’t be intimidated by the word “LaTeX”, it is intuitive. You literally just copy the prompt from the Gem, paste it into the compiler, and if you need a change, you just ask the Gem to tweak the code.

The Final Puzzle Piece: I Need Your Help!

So here is where I stand:

* Atomisation: Done.

* Lesson Plan: Done.

* Worksheet: Done.

There is one final frontier to conquer: The Slides.

As full-time teachers, we need to save every second we can. Right now, I am still manually building the Google Slides based on the text the Gem gives me. I tried NotebookLM, hoping it could auto-generate a deck, but that feature isn’t currently available (and I’m too impatient to wait!).

I have researched alternatives, but everything I find either requires a paid subscription or produces poor results.

This is where I need you.

Do you know a reliable, almost free website or extension that can translate my Gem’s text/plan into a Google Slide presentation? I am looking for something that integrates as smoothly as NotebookLM hopefully will in the future.

If you have a tool in your “toolbox” that solves this problem, please let me know in the comments. Let’s solve this last piece of the planning puzzle together!

As always, thanks for reading.

https://steplab.co/watch/great-teaching-unpacked-episode-4-embedding-development

Every teacher knows that post-observation feeling. You’ve just finished a solid lesson: students were engaged, they made progress, behaviour was calm, yet the feedback form doesn’t quite reflect the success you felt in the room.

Instead, you find yourself reading a list of “missed” strategies: you didn’t check on your PP students, you didn’t teach key vocabulary, you didn’t use that retrieval strategy, you didn’t support your SEN pupils visibly enough.

But here’s the issue: sometimes those things did happen but just not in that small window of the lesson that was observed. Or maybe, quite simply, it wasn’t the right moment for that particular strategy. Not every lesson suits “Turn and Talk.” Some classes aren’t ready for it yet.

The irony is that the same senior leadership teams who remind teachers to avoid overloading students often do exactly that to their teachers.

Teachers are told to make our instructions to students clear, concise, and free from cognitive overload. However, the feedback they receive can be the complete opposite: dense, checklist-heavy, and packed with so many “next steps” that none of them truly land.

Why Feedback Without Modelling Falls Flat

One of the most powerful shifts happening in some schools now is live modelling during feedback, not just telling teachers what to do, but showing it.

In the documentary The Great Teaching Unpacked by Steplab, there’s a great example of this: teachers and senior leaders role-play feedback together. They don’t just say “you could try narrating behaviour” — they act it out, together, in groups. This approach transforms feedback from something abstract and evaluative into something collaborative and developmental. It’s feedback as coaching, not criticism.

One Step at a Time

The best feedback isn’t a list of eight things to fix; it’s one actionable focus that a teacher can actually embed. Anything more than that adds unnecessary cognitive load and dilutes the impact.

When feedback is simplified, focused, and modelled live, it becomes empowering rather than overwhelming. Teachers leave the room feeling supported, not judged.

A Final Reflection

There are many brilliant schools in England where leaders genuinely care about staff wellbeing and professional growth. But sometimes, in their eagerness to help teachers improve, they accidentally create the very thing they warn against: cognitive overload.

So maybe the next time we talk about “explicit instruction,” “modelling,” and “reducing load,” we should ask ourselves:

Are we doing for our teachers what we expect them to do for their students?

In my last round of feedback, a colleague pointed out something I already knew: my mini whiteboard activities were too slow. The drag in pace opened the door to low-level disruption, and I didn’t get through as many planned questions as I wanted.

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

The advice was clear: pace is everything, especially in the first two weeks of school. Set the tempo high and you’ll set the tone for the rest of the year.

I see the logic. But I keep circling back to three questions:

1. Can we really demand a high pace straight away? September is clunky. Routines need to be re-established, students are rusty with classroom habits (especially mini whiteboards), and they’re generally “out of shape.” Shouldn’t the first couple of weeks be about rehearsal and settling in rather than chasing speed?

2. What about students who are simply slower? Even once routines are set, some students take longer — sometimes deliberately, sometimes not. That means the faster ones are waiting for 10–15 seconds while others catch up. Push the pace too hard and the slower ones disengage. Go too slow and the sharper students get restless.

3. How does this fit with our target of total participation? One of my school’s priorities is that every single student participates — 100%. But if I keep the pace high from the start, that “missing” 10–15% of slower responders inevitably gets left behind. In other words, pushing for pace can undermine the very goal of total participation.

My current position is this: pace in mini whiteboard work is about knowing your class and pitching it to about 80% of them. In the meantime, identify the slower students and check in with them once you’ve moved the majority on. But to reach that point, I think you need a couple of weeks of deliberate practice before things click.

So, is it really realistic to expect “high pace from day one”? Or is it more sustainable to teach the routines, accept a slower start, and then accelerate once the class is match-fit?

How do you manage mini whiteboard pace at the start of the year? Do you go full speed straight away, or build up gradually? I’d love to hear your take

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.