The Most Effective Teaching Strategies

To Use In Your School: Evidence Based

And Proven To Work
September 6, 2022 |9 min read

Anantha Anilkumar

Gather a room of teachers together and they will give you as many
teaching strategies as there are topics in the primary curriculum.
This article introduces the 13 most important teaching strategies you should be using –
the ones that have been proven to work in schools like yours and the ones that we use
every week with the 7000 pupils we teach in our one-to-one interventions.  

We also include the 6 learning strategies that your pupils should also
know about to enable them to move their own learning forwards.
The most effective teaching and learning strategies
 Teaching and learning strategies taken from the best of UK education research

 What are teaching strategies? 

 List of teaching strategies for primary school

 1. Know Your Pupils and Develop Their Respect

 2. Appropriate use of Summative and Formative Assessments

 3. Teach the Vocabulary 

 4. Explicit Instruction

 5. Effective Questioning Techniques 

 6. Deliberate Practice 

 7. Differentiation  

 8. Reinforcing Effort/Providing Recognition

  9. Metacognition
 10. Personalised Learning

 11. Collaborative Learning

 12. Explicitly Teach Thinking Skills & Problem Solving Techniques

 13. Modelling and Scaffolding

 Other Teaching Strategies To Consider

 List of Learning Strategies
 1. Spaced Practice

 2. Retrieval Practice

 3. Elaboration

 4. Interleaving

 5. Concrete Examples

 6. Dual Coding

List of teaching strategies for primary school

These are the 13 most important teaching strategies that you and all the teachers in
your school should at least have in your teaching toolkit.

No-one is suggesting you will use them in every lesson, but an awareness of what they
are and the results you can expect is essential to move your practice on.

And of course if you’re a school leader, or responsible for CPD in your school,
knowing what’s current and evidence-backed is key so that you can make an informed
choice the next time somebody suggests implementing a new or innovative teaching
technique.
1. Know Your Pupils and Develop Their Respect

This may sound basic, but the basis of all good teaching is an understanding of your
pupils and their learning needs. Allied to this is the respect you are held in by your
pupils. The relationship between teacher and student is a vital element of the learning
experience. Take time to get to know a new class from the first day, understand what
motivates them their barriers to learning. This is an often overlooked teaching strategy.
All our one-to-one tutors are made aware before working with a pupil if they have any
special educational needs, and take the time to get to know each pupil throughout the
1-to-1 lessons by asking about their hobbies and interests or the kinds of things they’ve
been learning in school.

Read more: How to Support a Child with Autism in the Classroom

In this way, whenever possible a tutor can personalise a lesson or a teaching technique
as appropriate to the child with a real world example.

2. Appropriate use of Summative and Formative Assessments

The first stage here is making sure you know the difference between formative and
summative assessment. It may sound obvious but you’d be surprised how many
teachers don’t use each appropriately.
To cover them quickly:

Summative assessment refers to an assessment that takes place after a block of

work has been completed, whether this is a term or a year. They are best thought of as
assessments of learning.
Formative assessments are those that take place day-to-day and are used to gauge
pupils’ understanding of a topic – they are assessments for learning. Formative
assessment is often used in a diagnostic capacity, to help us identify whether pupils are
struggling with a topic in the moment. This then guides and adapts our instruction
during the lesson, to better meet children’s needs.
Diagnosis of children’s gaps using formative assessments
We advocate the use of these kinds of diagnostic assessment to identifies a child’s
misconceptions. Usually this is best achieved through a set of multiple choice
questions.

As well as the correct answer, we can include multiple distractors – answers that are
incorrect based on a misconception a child may have e.g. around multiplying. If a
child chooses an incorrect answer therefore, we can easily identify exactly where their
thinking has gone wrong.
You can download our sample diagnostic quizzes (all including distractors and
explanations of them) for free.

An example page from one of our

Diagnostic Quizzes

For pupils on our one-to-one maths interventions, we use a diagnostic quiz a the start
of the intervention which is responsive based on answers to an earlier question. This
helps us more clearly identify not just misconceptions and weaknesses, but also where
a child’s strengths lie and what therefore needs less time spent on.
3. Teach the Vocabulary 

With the new focus in the curriculum on knowledge organizers, there’s no excuse for
children being without the relevant topic vocabulary. They need the words to be able
to create the thoughts and the sentences to confidently speak about a given topic.
This is why our tutors will always talk through any specialist maths words at the start
of a lesson with their pupils, explaining any new terms and checking for understanding
of previously covered ones.

A slide from
the intervention lessons, showing the vocabulary that tutors
may highlight to pupils.

We recommended co-creating your maths vocabulary lists with your pupils.

This Maths Vocabulary List is a great start.
4. Explicit Instruction

Also known as direct instruction, this teaching strategy is highly teacher-led, and
focuses on frequent questioning and guided practice to help pupils learn a topic.

The backbone of explicit instruction is the use of the worked example in

an Example-Problem Pair. This involves demonstrating a worked example in its
entirety in silence alongside a problem that pupils will then attempt.
 A worked example from How I Wish I’d
Taught Maths by Craig Barton

Silence is important in order to ensure pupils’ attention is not split between the
example and the spoken explanation, making it more likely that both will be more
fully absorbed and retained.

A pupil on a Third Space Learning’s online maths intervention programme will

necessarily have all other distractions eliminated so they can focus entirely on the
information on their screen and what the tutor is asking them to do; tutors can present
a worked example in real time in a learning environment without any visual or
auditory disruptions.
5. Effective Questioning Techniques 

While we are all aware of the importance of questioning as a tool to gauge pupils’
understanding of a topic, there are definite techniques to improve the efficacy of
your questioning in the classroom.
Questions such as “Are you sure?” and “How do you know?” encourage pupils to
engage in some basic critical thinking to establish how confident they are in an
answer and why, while others such as “Is there another way?” help to highlight where
multiple methods to derive a solution may exist.
Our tutors encourage pupils to verbalise their reasoning and ask questions to ensure
pupils have really got to grips with the topic at-hand: “How do you know that answer
is right?”, “Can you tell me how else you could work it out?” or “What do you need to
do first to answer this question?” are all questions that come up frequently during our
lessons!
Goal free problems are another questioning strategy worth considering using in your
classes.
6. Deliberate Practice 

One of the most effective ways of introducing new concepts to a class, Deliberate
Practice involves breaking learning down into a series of sub skills, each of which is
deliberately practiced in turn.

The 5 steps involved in deliberate practice are:

1. Isolate the skill
2. Develop the skill
3. Assess the skill
4. Final performance
5. Retrieval practice later
You can find a full explanation of each of these stages in our blog post on deliberate
practice in education.
But as an example, when teaching long multiplication method at KS2 we might use
deliberate practice thus:
 Identify (isolate) each specific sub skill involved in the long multiplication

method;
 Practise (develop) each of these one by one; 

 assess pupils’ use of these skills before moving on;

 have pupils put them all together for a final performance – in this case a full

long multiplication problem;

 return to this topic in later weeks and months to check pupils still retain those

skills.
At the beginning of every Third Space Learning intervention session pupils are given a
warm-up question related to a previously covered topic; this enables tutors to check
that they have retained the relevant skills (and where they have not, to return to the
topic).
 Warm up as
part of Third Space Learning’s retrieval practice

7. Differentiation  

Far more than simply “splitting the whole class into small groups based on
attainment”, positive and effective differentiation at the primary school level can be
difficult to achieve – poor differentiation strategies risk actually widening the
attainment gap we’re attempting to close.
But there are plenty of impactful differentiation strategies; techniques such as
interleaving and phased learning, as well as the use of maths manipulatives and
formative assessment, are among those proven to have a beneficial impact on pupils
when properly employed.
As we’ve already discussed, formative assessment is a significant aspect of how Third
Space’s tutors gauge pupil progress. But we also make use of several other
differentiation strategies during lessons, such as spaced practice, interleaving and a
mixture of direct instruction and inquiry-based learning.
8. Reinforcing Effort/Providing Recognition

Helping pupils make a link between putting effort into a task and receiving recognition
is an important step in developing a classroom environment that fosters active
learning.

Encouraging pupils to put more effort into activities only goes so far without
something to provide them with the motivation to do so. Praise and recognition are
motivators that pupils are already familiar with; shifting them
from being correct to giving full effort can be highly effective.
Third Space Learning’s tutors establish an effort-focused environment right from the
first session, encouraging pupils to talk through their answers and celebrate their
mistakes as learning opportunities, ensuring they approach each intervention as
another chance to try.

Since we began our intervention programmes, our tutors have celebrated and rewarded
pupil effort by awarding over 32 MILLION Effort Points!

9. Metacognition

Literally ‘thinking about thinking’, metacognition has been recognised by the EEF as
one of the most effective, lowest cost teaching strategies there is, with pupil making an
average of seven months’ additional progress.

Metacognition in primary schools often incorporates some of the other effective

teaching strategies, such as questioning in the classroom – “How do you know?” not
only asks pupils to justify their solutions, but has them thinking about their own
thought processes for deriving that solution.
Teaching pupils how to learn maths, plan, monitor and self-evaluate their learning also
improves pupil motivation and encourages them to work harder in lessons, tying into
another teaching strategy.
All our tutors are trained to use a variety of metacognitive strategies as standard during
sessions, and we provide pupils with numerous moments for self-reflection both
during and after sessions.

10. Personalised Learning

It might sound obvious, but pupils are more likely to engage with learning when is
more targeted to them and appeals to their interests! This may be difficult to achieve
early on – especially with a full class of 30 pupils – but as familiarity and rapport
builds throughout the year it should become easier to make activities and even
questions more personalised to individual children.

At Third Space, we’ve built our online interventions on personalisation; all our pupils
undertake an Initial Diagnostic Assessment when they begin their programmes, which
identifies their strengths and weaknesses in maths and allows us to design a lesson
plan that helps them make progress where they need it.

An example
question from Third Space’s diagnostic assessment
Our tutors then build on this by adding a personal touch to those lessons, incorporating
pupils’ interests into lessons with ease thanks to our online platform.

11. Collaborative Learning

Also referred to as ‘cooperative learning’, the idea of having pupils work in groups for
certain classroom activities won’t be new to most teachers.

But the EEF notes that the impact of group work can vary widely, and that to make it
most effective teachers should focus on well-structured tasks that promote talk and
interaction between pupils.
The concept of ‘competitive’ collaborative learning (where groups of students compete
against one another) has been shown to have some impact, but caution is advised in
case pupils focus more on the competition rather than the learning.

12. Explicitly Teach Thinking Skills & Problem Solving Techniques

Mathenatical problem solving techniques don’t always come naturally to pupils; while
metacognitive strategies such as those mentioned above make it more likely that pupils
will be able to apply critical thinking to a problem, there is no set way to ensure that
this will happen.

Research into the topic suggests that context-agnostic deployment of problem solving
techniques only occurs once pupils have secure domain knowledge, and the
opportunity to practise.
Without these, pupils often fall into the trap of attributing importance to the so-called
‘surface features’ of a problem, which we naturally discount as irrelevant to the actual
maths involved.

That said, explicit teaching of thinking skills is still of considerable importance; once

domain knowledge has been (relatively) secured, teaching pupils how to recognise and
focus on the ‘deep structure’ of problems enables them to apply their knowledge more
effectively.
Try using several ‘Same Surface Different Deep’ (SSDD) problems in lessons – where
the surface features of the questions are the same, but the deep structure varies (e.g.
division, multiplication, addition etc.).

These questions eliminate any confusion regarding surface features and thus allow
pupils to focus on differentiating the deep structures.

An example SSDD question, taken from

ssddproblems.com

In the run-up to the SATs, your Year 6 pupils may unintentionally revert to focusing
on the ‘surface features’ of questions when encountering the reasoning papers.
To help combat this, make sure you and they are aware of the different types of maths
reasoning questions in year 6 to help them identify not just the maths problem solving
techniques they need to know, but the types of questions that are likely to require
certain techniques.
13. Modelling and Scaffolding

You may already be familiar with the “I do, We do, You do” method of scaffolding,
but it’s worth taking some time to dive into why it’s as effective as it is.
Modelling is one of the most important factors in ensuring student learning of a
particular topic, but it is most impactful when it can introduce new concepts without
increasing pupils’ cognitive load – hence the ‘I, We You’ approach.

By building from teacher-led, to joint construction, to independent working, we create

a structure that presents learning as less of a step-change and more of an actual
process. It also allows us greater flexibility; more time can be spent on one stage e.g.
joint construction is it becomes necessary.

Gradual scaffolding with support slides

All Third Space Learning intervention lessons make use of this kind of gradual
scaffolding method, and our online platform lends even more flexibility to the
scaffolding structure – tutors can pull from a bank of ‘support slides’ if spending more
time on a concept or process is necessary.

A sample
support slide from TSL’s online platform.
Other Teaching Strategies To Consider
The teaching strategies above form the basis of our one-to-one lessons, but some other
teaching practices you’ll need to consider in your own classroom include :Use of
education technology
Knowing when and where to bring technology into the classroom is a delicate
balancing act. While children tend to react well to technology-based lessons, there’s
always the risk that they focus on the tech over the learning.
Read more: How To Do An Education Technology Audit In Your School 
Behaviour management
Effective classroom management is its own topic, but there’s no doubt that a well-
behaved class (not necessarily a perfectly-behaved one) is far more likely to engage
with lessons.
Inquiry-based learning 
While triggering the curiosity of your pupils for a topic is the necessary first step in
inquiry-based learning, presenting them with the opportunity to research and report on
the topic is where learning really occurs.
How you manage class discussions e.g. ‘Think, pair, share’
Somewhat related to behaviour management, class or group discussions are most
beneficial when they have a clear, well-established structure to them. Students should
not only feel they have the opportunity to share their thoughts, but understand that
others’ thoughts also have value.
Feedback process and understanding
The single most impactful teaching strategy when used correctly, feedback (whether
from the teacher or another source e.g. peer marking) needs to be specific, encouraging
and actionable – pupils need to be able to understand where they could improve, and
how.
Read more: Why My School Banned Marking
Growth Mindset
Separate from praise and rewarding effort, developing growth mindset can be a very
valuable tool in developing pupils’ resilience and fostering a more positive attitude
towards both maths specifically and learning in general.
Read more: How To Get Growth Mindset Right In Primary Schools
Read more
 Quality First Teaching Strategies Checklist

 Introduction to Cognitive Load

 Teaching Bottom Set Maths

 EEF Putting Evidence To Work Report Summary

 Primary School Teachers’ Guide To Learning and Memory

 What Is Variation Theory?

 Dyscalculia In Schools: A Guide To Identifying And Supporting Pupils With

‘Maths Dyslexia’
 ADHD In The Classroom

List of Learning Strategies

Last, but not least, central to any good teaching practice is explicitly teaching learners
of all ages about learning strategies. These are the 6 learning strategies we think every
student should be familiar with by the end of Year 6.
1. Spaced Practice

Ensuring that learned material is revisited at regular intervals instead of all at once
much later on, when more of it is likely to be forgotten. For older students, study
calendars can be of immense help in the run-up to major milestones such as the KS2
SATs.

2. Retrieval Practice

Retrieval is the process of recalling information purely from memory, without the aid
of learning materials. Effective retrieval practice helps embed information more
thoroughly in our minds, since we no longer need context to recall it.
3. Elaboration

Tied into questioning in the classroom, elaboration puts the onus on pupils to do more
than ‘just’ recalling information. The use of open ended questions such as “How did I
get that answer” help pupils to make connections between the things they’ve learnt
rather than seeing them as several unrelated facts.

4. Interleaving

A wealth of research is now available that suggests the benefits of interleaving –

mixing practice of different skills with one another – in helping pupils better identify
the necessary strategies to solve different problems. Interleaving with connected topics
(e.g. division and multiplication) amplifies this effect. Our Year 6 maths revision
programme is built on this.
5. Concrete Examples

As maths educators the Concrete Pictorial Abstract Approach is embedded into the

way we teach. Within our online tuition, we have many different ways of explaining a
topic and as an extension we may ask pupils to come up with their own concrete
examples for concepts, based on the examples we’ve used in explaining the concept to
them.
6. Dual Coding

Combining words and visuals in teaching materials. This isn’t referring to speech (as
we established earlier), but having pupils create some kind of visual aid (e.g. a sketch,
a diagram) to accompany written text can help them reinforce the concept in their
brain in two different ways, making it easier to recall. Anyone who’s created slides for
their pupils will be familiar with the challenge of imparting information through words
+ pictures.

References
 Hattie’s index of teaching & learning strategies and their effect size

 EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit

 ResearchEd

 Teaching in Effective Primary Schools: Research into Pedagogy and Children’s

Learning (Siram, Taggart et. al) published by UCL IOE Press.

Do you have pupils who need extra support in maths?
Every week Third Space Learning’s maths specialist tutors support thousands of pupils
across hundreds of schools with weekly online 1-to-1 lessons and maths
interventions designed to plug gaps and boost progress.

Since 2013 we’ve helped over 125,000 primary and secondary school pupils become
more confident, able mathematicians. Learn more or request a personalised quote for
your school to speak to us about your school’s needs and how we can help.

Primary school tuition targeted to the needs of each child and closely following the
National Curriculum.