#230 HoD Space ep2: Notes in exercise books, Ofsted, and A-level class sizes

So I've been selfish.

I've picked out one that I've got a bit of a strong interest in, but it was one of our members got in contact and said, would you run a survey on, and this is the exact question he wanted me to ask, which of the following best fits what students are writing in their exercise book in your average key stage three, four maths lesson? Now, the reason I've got a vested interest in this is I wrote an ED Substack post about two years ago called The Myth of Copying Things Down, where I argued that copying things down is so ingrained in lessons that nobody even questions it.

And by copying things down, I mean worked examples, notes, and so on, lesson objectives, all that kind of thing.

And it's the biggest waste of time that you could ever imagine.

So this member wanted to know, well, let's throw it out to the Hotspace community and see what people are doing.

So listeners can play a little game here.

I'm going to give you the four options and I would like you to guess what you think the most popular option is.

So these were the four options we gave to our members.

I do, we do an independent work.

So by I do, I mean the work to example.

We do the kind of check for understanding the transition between the work to example and independent work.

And obviously independent work could be a worksheet it could be a textbook something projected upon the board so that was option number one in the notebook goes the i do we do and independent work option two was just i do and independent work so perhaps the we do goes on mini whiteboards option three was just independent work so the i do and we do are not going anywhere near these books Option four, students don't have exercise books or perhaps they have iPads or perhaps everything's done on worksheets and then essentially thrown away in the bin.

And then there was a fifth option, which was none of the above.

So listeners, what do you think the most popular option was there? And Joe Morgan, what did you go for? What do you do at your place?

I don't get them to write down a worked example.

I will model it and then I'll leave a worked example on the board.

So, for example, if I'm putting up a task on the board, that worked example will sit on my, you know, I've got two boards.

I've got my projector board on my screen and I've got like an old fashioned board.

So I'll leave a worked example up there, but I don't ask them to copy that down.

They just do their independent work in the book.

In just independent work.

Yeah.

So I went for independent work only as well.

And that was the most popular, which was a pleasant surprise to me with, sorry, no, it wasn't the most popular.

What a load of rubbish that is.