Portrait of the author

Hi, I’m Dan Rodriguez-Clark.

I am an experienced IB Mathematics teacher, with experience teaching both in the UK and in international schools in South America.

As a Teaching and Learning Lead and Mathematics Coordinator in two different schools offering the IB, I have developed an approach to teaching IB Mathematics courses that combines the ideas from cognitive science on how we learn with the approaches unique to the IB such as incorporating ideas from TOK.

I have published case studies in two books:

  • A Quiet Education: Challenging the extrovert ideal in our schools

  • Organise Ideas: Thinking by Hand, Extending the Mind

My Approach

Each course is broken down into units covering broad areas of mathematics.

Each of these units is split into the constituent skills that students need to learn about. Some of these skills are small and self-contained, whilst others are larger and link to other skills.

Each skill begins with some questions to check Required Prior Knowledge. This is the content from previous learning that is essential to make sense of the current skill.

The Get Ready is designed to get you thinking about the skill, and begin to prime your brain to learn about the new content.

This is followed by some notes about the content. These will always include some typed up notes, but will often be accompanied by a video demonstration to explain the concept, and sometimes include small bits for you to complete yourself, to ensure you are engaging with the content.

Next there will be an example with a video explanation of how to answer the example.

Then it is Your Turn to have a go, with some further questions for you to attempt. Again, there will usually be video solutions for each of these, but the idea is that you need to try them first, BEFORE watching the video. This is essential if you are actually going to learn how to solve problems. Some Your Turn problems will have typed up solutions that you can reveal after you have attempted them.

The block of Notes - Examples - Your Turns might be repeated a few times within a skill if relevant.

At the end of the skill there is a Key Facts applet. This will create a random prompt from that skill, and you have to recall the fact that goes with this. This is designed to help you recall the most important information easily.

My Philosophy

In my role as Teaching and Learning Coordinator I was able to delve into the research behind successful teaching and learning. From this research, my key principles are:

  • Everybody can learn Maths with good instruction;

  • We learn based on what we already know, hence the importance of checking prior knowledge;

  • In order to learn, new information must pass through the Working Memory to reach the Long Term Memory;

  • Working Memory is limited, and if it is overloaded you won’t be able to learn the new information;

  • The use of Worked Examples is important for novice learners to understand new processes;

  • We learn about new things by thinking hard about them;

  • Practice makes permanent, not perfect.