As part of some reading lately relating to "great teachers" I came across an acronym I hadn't seen before, OTR. As per usual my interest was piqued and off I went down the rabbit hole to learn what these OTRs were. What are OTRs? OTR stands of Opportunities to Respond. OTRs therefore are opportunities for students to respond to questions, tasks or demands. Some literature emphasises that the responses must be correct while other papers focus on the fact that feedback on responses must be given. Examples of OTRs might include an individual responding to a teacher prompt responding verbally in a group (choral response) responding via white board or holding up cards responding by using some form of digital classroom response system responding to peers in group work A subset of OTRs is TD-OTRs which are teacher directed opportunities to respond. Personally I love getting students talking to each other in class so I like the idea of considering OTRs that are no
RebelMaths are two Mathematics Educators working in the Irish Higher Education Sector. We are always seeking ways to improve our teaching and see this blog as a great motivator to make us gather some of our thoughts and maybe share some things we have learned along the way.