Give the class thirty seconds of quiet page-turning before any hands go up, then take two or three honest answers. You are warming up the idea that their thinking has moved, not fishing for a right answer.

Left, September: place 0.25, 0.4 and 0.7 on a line from 0 to 1 — three marks only, no note of how 0.25 was fixed between 0.2 and 0.3.

Right, May: share €36 between Aoife and Ben in ratio 5:4 — every step shown: 5 + 4 = 9 parts, 36 ÷ 9 = €4 one part, Aoife 5 × 4 = €20, Ben 4 × 4 = €16, check €20 + €16 = €36.

Point, don't narrate — let them compare and name the difference themselves before you do: the later piece shows each step, not just the answer.

Hold out for it; revoice a strong answer — the later piece lets someone else follow how you got there.

Then settle and write up the three criteria for choosing proudest pieces: a clear method, it taught you something, you'd be proud to show it. Leave these up for the rest of the lesson.

Talk this one through together. Ask a pupil to read out the key working lines from a piece they are happy to share, and copy those two or three lines straight onto the IWB as they say them. The class then agrees or corrects out loud whether the piece meets each of the three criteria. (If your room happens to have a visualiser or document camera, holding the page under it works too, but it is not needed.)

Work through exactly one piece against all three marks, naming each as you go. Do not let it drift into a critique session; the point is to model the judging so every pupil can then do it silently at their own desk. If a piece fails one criterion, that is fine and worth saying so, it shows the criteria have teeth.

Fallback if no pupil volunteers (or if a pupil would rather not have their work judged publicly): reuse the later-year ratio example from Watch and Notice, which is already on the board, and judge that against all three criteria instead. The modelling works just as well on the shared example, and no pupil is put on the spot.

This is the practice round, pupils work quietly in their own journals. Keep the room calm; this is a reflection beat, not a race. Circulate and prompt with the three criteria on the board when a pupil is stuck choosing.

• Watch for pupils choosing only their neatest pages, push them toward a piece that taught them something, even if it is messy.
• Watch for one-word reasons ("good"), ask what does it show that you could not do before?
• The improve-it prompt is the harder one; the strongest pupils should name a specific change (a lined-up decimal point, a labelled diagram, a checked answer), not "do it neater".

The four learning-objective checkpoints are: three pieces chosen, a reason per piece, a change-my-thinking sentence, and one improvement named. Every pupil should reach at least the first three.