Natalie Moffat has been a primary school teacher for over a decade in schools in the North East of England. In that time, she has taught across the primary age range. Here, she explores, 8 simple techniques she has developed over her career to support with workload and achieve good progress.
Guest Blog - 8 ways to reduce workload in Key Stage 1.
1. Use photo labels. By printing practical maths photographs straight on to labels, you cut out trimming and gluing time.
2. Where possible, mark in class. Live marking can take time to embed in any classroom, but marking as children are working has its merits. Teachers are able to offer immediate feedback and have huge gains on pupil progress whilst cutting down distance marking after school. It is part of assessment for learning. I usually say, “Who wants to be part of the ticky box club?”
3. Have counters already in plastic wallets. When working on numbers to 20, keep 20 counters/objects/equipment in separate plastic wallets to quickly hand out at the start of the lesson.
4. Invest in some plastic folders. Nothing needs laminated in maths ever again.
5. Have names already written on post-it notes stored in the children’s pencil pots. This is to make it easy when taking photographs of practical work. A name can easily be placed with the work and the photograph will be printed and put straight in that child’s book.
6. Keep previous lesson activities and worksheets in folders for children. They can access this folder when they are finished.
7. Use post-it note speech bubbles so that children can record their own reasoning.
8. The most amazing classroom tool. I used to expand activity sheets as large as I could for children to see while I modeled. Sometimes I would ask children to gather round while I was modelling using apparatus. I’d even stick blue tac to apparatus and move them around the white board. Everything is now so much easier with the camera/visualiser. This may also be used to model live marking to children to refocus what success looks like in a lesson.
