Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Mr Barton Maths Podcast, with me Craig Barton.

This time around I spoke to maths teacher, Craig Latimir. We discussed Craig's process for planning a maths lesson.

I asked Craig the following questions, and plenty more:

1. What did your lesson planning process used to look like, and what problems did this lead to in the classroom?


2. What are your overall principles of planning now?


3. Do you plan in terms of individual lessons, or a sequence of lessons, or a hybrid?

And then Craig takes us through the key phases of a lesson, describing how he plans them and exactly how they play out in the lesson, including

1. The Do Now


2. Exposition


3. Modelling


4. Checking for understanding


5. Responsive teaching 


6. Practice


7. End

I have entitled this episode how to plan a maths lesson, but I suspect the key principles could apply to other subjects. So please feel free to share with your non-maths colleagues if you think this is the case.

Resources and videos from the episode:

Follow this link: mrbartonmaths.com/blog/how-to-plan-a-maths-lesson

Useful time-stamps:

• Craig and I discuss our past lesson planning crimes (15:01 )


• Craig shares his key principles for lesson planning (22:45 )


• Craig tells us the first thing he thinks about when planning (52:18 )


• Craig discusses how he plans and delivers the Do Now (57:18 )


• Then the exposition (1:20:37 )


• Then modelling (1:29:04 )


• Then how he questions and checks for understanding (1:44:32 )


• Then how he responds to those checks (1:59:56 )


• Then the practice phase (2:08:00 )


• And finally the end of the lesson (2:16:15 )


• I begin my reflection on all I learned from Craig (2:55:36 )