New teachers rely on resources. Experienced teachers make their own. But, is this always the case? Sadly, no. Too often, lessons become about covering pages rather than uncovering understanding.
The good news is, you can stand out. By focusing on quality over quantity, you can make your teaching reflect your skills and insight — not just parrot the department handout.
Quality Beats Quantity — Every Time in Learning
I have less than fond memories of the feedback I received in my early years of teaching. Feedback pertaining to how much the learners in my care wrote, how full the jotters were, how often they underlined date and title. The message being that what learners produce needs to look good and look full, and meeting this criteria means learning has occurred in the classroom: quantity over quality.
Call me a rebel, but I never prescribed to this, I still don’t. Don’t get me wrong, practice is necessary for mastery, but understanding comes first. Meeting learning objectives isn’t about how many questions are completed — but too often, that’s how it’s measured.
Following the earlier approach will lose the learners needing more from you and disengage those who need more challenge.
Support should be about explanation — maybe you went too fast the first time. It could mean offering 1-to-1 help, especially if the learner is too self-conscious to ask a question in front of the whole class. Or it could involve partner work, which allows learners to hear another interpretation.
Extension should be about application — using what has been learned in a real-life example. It might mean creating something new, such as explaining a pattern spotted or a rule method for other learners. Or it could be a new challenge — something hinted at but not fully explained in the lesson.
In a nutshell, the message we should share is quality over quantity.
Measure Understanding, not Volume
The end goal is understanding, not filled jotters. Quality work shows learning; volume does not.
Faster learners shouldn’t be punished with more of the same. Challenge them instead to apply and extend their thinking. Likewise, learners needing support shouldn’t experience extra practice as a punishment. Look inward: what can you reframe or recraft to help those who didn’t connect with your first explanation?
Balance Understanding with Practice
Saying this, learners need to appreciate the impact of practice. Memory is bolstered by repetition. Making a process automatic requires doing that process repeatedly; this is a fine balance that teachers need to practice getting right. Is the learning understood? Is it understood enough to be able to apply it elsewhere? Is it understood enough that there is no thinking needed about the process?
If ever learners doubt the impact of meaningful practice, draw their attention to a skill like driving a car, tying a shoelace, or dribbling a football. These skills are worlds apart, but are all reliant on practising the smaller steps that make up the larger skill. It is through meaningful practice that follows understanding that mastery emerges, not mind-numbing repetition to fill a jotter.
Maximising this Relationship
If you, as a teacher, see understanding in what learners share with you, your job is effectively done and you now pass them the torch so they take control of their next steps. Highlight the good that should be repeated or extended. Highlight the bad and illustrate why it is, so that such practice can be avoided. Create instances for making meaning of a process rather than providing practice for practice sake. This process will create bridges to new learning while also cementing the understanding they have achieved. This will spur them to make such processes automatic.
Use Resources, Don’t Let Them Use You!
If you are a teacher, there is a curriculum document to follow for your subject or year group. Create your learning intentions and success criteria for the day/week/term from that. Use the prescribed practice materials to support your delivery of the learning intentions and use the results from the practice to access the success criteria for the lesson.
The trap you must avoid is to use the practice materials to craft the learning intentions and success criteria. Use your craft, your training and years of study to break down the broad outcomes into manageable, achievable objectives, with clear success criteria, that learners can realise through engagement with the practice materials you provide.
The end is the success criteria, realised through the learning intention you wrote, first. The resource you share is one of a multitude of avenues learners can travel toward the success you are supporting them to achieve. Focus on the end and the learning intentions that will lead you there, not the practice that follows the sharing of key concepts.
The same principles apply beyond the classroom — whether you’re designing a lesson plan or an education product, the end goal must drive the method.
A Product’s Purpose, not the Additional Features
You have built an education platform. The platform is engaging and attractive, in terms of visual features and fun. Young and older children enjoy the games they can play and the maths they experience doesn’t detract from the fun experience.
The teacher feels at ease watching the class engage in maths practice and celebrates success with them as they compete with computers, their friends, the rest of the school, and the rest of the world. There is just one problem, what did they practice? What objective did they address, or success criteria did they meet? Without this end in mind, the practice, though constructive, lacks direction and purpose. Even more importantly, perhaps, the teacher has no idea if individual learners have progressed in any way.
The platform is truly engaging, but a revamp is crucial to achieve the company’s goal of engaging all learners. If this does not happen, the platform will become a one-hit wonder, or it will become a ‘golden time’ treat, where teachers set it up for kids to play. Unfortunately, in this state, the product is not a resource teachers would choose to support meeting the success criteria.
Enter the Education Injection
With the addition of steps, building up into skills, combining to address regional curriculum outcomes, the product shifts into a supportive tool rather than just a time filler. The skills, grouped by year group, are achieveable for learners who have been exposed to effective teaching that aims to address the regional outcomes.
The incentives, from the product, encourage the practice that is needed to acbieve the success criteria and is designed with teachers and learners in mind.
- Practice at the step level occurs.
- Steps within the skill are achieved, resulting in instant rewards.
- Skills progress, according to the designed progression pathway for the year, or according to what the teacher sets within the current study.
- New challenges are presented, following on from understood skills.
This process keeps learners progressing. This process of ‘practice the learning’, and ‘challenge with related new content’, is an ideal system for a classroom that emphasises the individual and their abilities and needs.
Tieing it Together
Some writers imagine the story’s conclusion first and then guide their characters toward that climax and resolution. Traders often buy stock with a clear selling price in mind. Athletes visualize the medal they aim to win before they even start the race.
Approach your role with the same mindset: know your goal, design a path with deliberate steps, and practice for mastery. Whether you’re developing progression pathways, planning lessons, or mapping out product design to engage customers, clarity of purpose is essential for success.
Start today—define your goal, map your steps, and take the first deliberate action toward achieving it.