My chum, Mark, has come up with a marvellous idea – to create entire series of lessons for teachers to use so they don’t have to go through the very time-consuming process of putting together the lessons themselves.  The lessons would additionally be editable so teachers can tinker with them if they wish.

Mark is very clever.  He literally knows everything. Literally.  And because of this I decided to him a few not-very-probing questions about his “comprehensive lesson packages”.  The answers I’ve typed out are my interpretation of what he told me.

What would these lessons involve?  Lesson objectives, short videos, slides and differentiated worksheets.

Has anyone else done this?  No.  The Times Educational Supplement (TES) and others have individual lessons but not entire sets.  Also the many of these TES lessons are poor quality.

Why might teachers purchase these sets of lessons?  (1) Reduce workload (2) The lessons would tick all third-party boxes (e.g. OFSTED) (3) They would contain differentiated lesson resources (4) They would be top quality.

Can you tell me what the square root of 1,048,576 is?  Yes.

See.  He’s a bloody genius.

The easy bit of all this, however, is the idea.  Putting it into practice though, is almost – almost – impossible.  Who would spend hundreds of hours putting these lessons together?  If it was a teacher how much would they need to be paid?  How much would teachers or schools be charged?  (The cost of setting all this up would probably be in the tens of thousands)  How would we stop naughty teachers sharing these sets of lessons?

It’s a great idea.  But it’s a case of 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.

If you’re a teacher and you have any thoughts on this, please do let me know either through social media or better still, email me: editor@firestonebooks.com  I’d love to know what you think.