After the starter and before the plenary, we suggest that staff teach 'new' topics from the school's scheme of work using the Foundation's version of the Rosenshine Principles. This allows students to gain confidence. The repetition and reminder and connections to previous related topics is left mainly for the starters and plenaries.

This reduces cognitive load for the students, by providing a simple predictable structure for 'new' material, and takes a maximum of 40 minutes from explanation to assessing independently completed work. Should students be frustrated on occasion with their performance in the main part of the lesson, they know that the lesson will finish with a plenary that they can excel on, thereby allowing them to leave the classroom in a positive state of mind.

These exercises should be straight forward, and repetitive and not jump cognitively too much (unlike the starters and plenaries).

The question should be modelled once by the teacher the students copy it into their notes. If the classroom has an electronic whiteboard for the questions and a traditional whiteboard, teachers can leave the model question up and add assistance to it as the class proceeds.

The modelling should be done 'live' by the teacher, as this allows students to hear the thinking behind the steps taken as it is written down, and prevents rushed explanations and does not visually overload the students with the following steps, even within one line of mathematics. The maths will also be presented on the board in the same way students write their work, which pre-prepared typed examples typically cannot be.

Students should then attempt an identical question with different numbers, depending on the class size, either work on the mini-whiteboards for visual checking by the teaching staff, or work in their books. In small classes with students that struggle with writing, it can be preferable for teaching staff quickly walking around the room to assess students' understanding, so students can see at the end of the lesson everything they have achieved, and faster paced students can be moved onto independent practice quicker.

Once basic understanding is secure the students then start working on their individual practice.

For differentiation:

1. for students that believe they understand the techniques being practised and get frustrated with listening to the teacher and writing down notes on something they already know; allow them to start the work from the electronic whiteboard, without disturbing the others, and prove (or not!) to the teaching staff that they do not have this particular gap in their knowledge.

2. have a set of text books for those students who grasp the content and/or write quicker with extension questions to increase their pace of lesson but allow other students to work more slowly and reduce teacher cognitive load in planning lessons.

3. keep catch-up exercise sheets, from previous lessons, are useful for students with poor attendance, when teaching a sequence of techniques

4. give some students a target for example of completing half the work on the board if required