Exam vocab revisited.
In 2015, having completed action research as part of my PGDip in Maths Education at Warwick and early in my teaching career, I wrote an article for the Times Educational Supplement on the value of teaching A-level maths exam vocabulary explicitly.
Ten years later, how has my teaching and thinking about pedagogy evolved? Do I stand by what I wrote then?
100% YES.
The underlying idea was something that I was taught on my PGCE - “make the implicit, explicit” - and the specific idea of teaching maths-specific exam vocabulary is something I work on with all my students. In the article, I wrote about it being needed most for A-level students and that continues to be true but there is no reason why it can’t be taught sooner so that the leap to A-level is less shocking.
The research and the article that led from it have become a integral part of my teaching. I am constantly considering what fundamentals may not have yet been made explicit to my students and I focus on making them explicit. This can mean having conversations about simpler ideas than my students or their parents might expect but if that brick of understanding is missing from their wall of maths, it needs filling in and will give them a stronger foundation for future learning.