“Character” may be the latest buzzword in education – but it’s long been at the core of the NACE Challenge Framework, as NACE Challenge Award Adviser Elaine Ricks-Neal explains…

Increasingly schools are focusing on the development of “character” and learning dispositions as performance outcomes. Ofsted is also making it clear that it will look more at how well schools are developing resilient, well-rounded, confident young learners who will flourish in society.

The best schools, irrespective of setting, have always known the importance of this. And this focus on character has long been at the heart of the NACE Challenge Framework – a tool for school self-review and improvement which focuses on provision for more able learners, as part of a wider programme of sustainable school improvement and challenge for all.

Here are 10 key ways in which the Framework supports the development of school-wide approaches, mindsets and skills for effective character education:

1. “Can-do” culture

The NACE Challenge Framework embeds a school-wide “You can do it” culture of high expectations for all learners, engendering confidence and self-belief – prerequisites for learning.

2. Raising aspirations

The Framework challenges schools to raise aspirations for what all learners could achieve in life, irrespective of background. This is especially significant in schools where learners may not be exposed to high levels of ambition among parents/carers.

3. Curriculum of opportunity

Alongside a rich curriculum offer, the Framework asks schools to consider their enrichment and extracurricular programmes – ensuring that all learners have opportunities to develop a wide range of abilities, talents and skills, to develop cultural capital, and to access the best that has been thought and said.

4. Challenge for all

At the heart of the Framework is the goal of teachers understanding the learning needs of all pupils, including the most able; planning demanding, motivating work; and ensuring that all learners have planned opportunities to take risks and experience the challenge of going beyond their capabilities.

5. Aspirational targets

To ensure all learners are stretched and challenged, the Framework promotes the setting of highly aspirational targets for the most able, based on their starting points.

6. Developing young leaders

As part of its focus on nurturing student voice and independent learning skills, the Framework seeks to ensure that more able learners have opportunities to take on leadership roles and to make a positive contribution to the school and community.

7. Ownership of learning

The Framework encourages able learners to articulate their views on their learning experience in a mature and responsible way, and to manage and take ownership of their learning development.

8. Removing barriers

The Framework has a significant focus on underachievement and on targeting vulnerable groups of learners, setting out criteria for the identification of those who may have the potential to shine but have barriers in the way which need to be recognised and addressed individually.

9. Mentoring and support

Founded on the belief that more able and exceptionally able learners are as much in need of targeted support as any other group, the Framework demands that schools recognise and respond to their social and emotional and learning needs in a planned programme of mentoring and support.

10. Developing intrinsic motivation

Beyond recognising individual talents, the Framework promotes the celebration of success and hard work, ensuring that learners feel valued and supported to develop intrinsic motivation and the desire to be “the best they can.”

Find out more… To find out more about the NACE Challenge Development Programme and how it could support your school, click here or get in touch.

Gail Roberts, More Able and Talented Coordinator at Llanfoist Fawr Primary School, shares a simple but effective activity to engage and challenge all learners – combining mathematics, oracy, collaborative working and more…

Facilitating learning, rather than directional teaching, not only ensures children take ownership, it also opens the floodgates to more able learners. Obviously it is vital to choose an effective challenging task and teach the skills they need beforehand, in order for learners to access the experience fully and develop it further through ongoing evaluation.
 
In the past at school, children may have brought cakes in from home to sell as an enterprise activity. Although this is usually an enjoyable experience, it isn’t a true representation of the profit and loss of running a business, and fails to optimise on additional opportunities for learning.
 
In this alternative activity, I ask learners to work in teams to make 3D shapes and then come up with a plan to sell them. This gives them a tangible experience, a determination for gaining information about shapes, and a chance to make choices which they can then witness the effects of at first-hand.

Develop key skills and understanding

From two weeks before the planned “sale day”, I encourage learners to consider the skills they will need and provide opportunities for them to develop these. Identified skills include:

• Persuasive language – learners are challenged to think of sentences that will entice people to stop at their stall, come up with a catchy jingle or slogan, etc.
• Negotiation – bartering on prices for the shapes.
• Understand profit and loss and interest.
• How to keep a record of the accounts, on paper or electronically.
• Elect leaders of the group and allocate team members.
• Sell using at least two languages.
• Working effectively as a team toward a shared aim.

Teaching the children how to formulate the boxes on a spreadsheet is easy, if you have previously taught coordinates. When spoken about in simple terms, profit and loss can be seen by every child. Allowing more able learners to formulate the spreadsheet gives them the opportunity to make it as complex as they want, while the opportunity to develop a business plan allows more able business minds to shine.
 
Giving learners time to think and plan for the sale day ensures that ideas can be evaluated and developed, and allows the group to come together as a team.

Replicate real-life challenges

The activity can also be used to help learners develop their understanding of real-life business processes and challenges, including:

• Premises to rent – every 15 minutes learners must pay rent for their stall; if late, they incur a fine.
• Property maintenance – fines incurred for untidy stalls.  
• Marketing – stalls decorated to attract customers.
• Interest rates – opportunity to start business with a loan, which must be paid back with interest.

Allow learners to shape the activity

The learning can be further enriched by inviting learners to suggest rules for the running of the activity. For example:

• When buying, be willing to pay more if learners can answer questions on the properties and names of the shapes, and if well-made or decorated.
• If someone in the group is not working efficiently, allow the team leader to give a warning or sanction.

Over many years of facilitating this kind of learning, the outcome has never been the same twice. Learners think of things that I would never have come up with. For example, this year they discussed ideas to test individual skills and allocate jobs based on ability, rather than simply getting every team member to cut, decorate, stick and sell. They discussed ideas about firing those who weren’t working hard enough, buying other teams’ products and selling them on at a profit, buying another table to expand their company, and researching language patterns and properties of shapes in order to sell to a broader audience knowledgeably.

What learners say…

While the summary above is hopefully sufficient to allow you to run a similar activity in your school, the impact is best expressed in the words of learners themselves:
 
“I thought this was an excellent idea for learning. Without realising it, we were making many cross-curriculum links, especially between maths and oracy. We were using strategies for problem solving and working as a team. We were having fun but learning at the same time.”
 
“I think learning in this way makes it easier to learn, because we are learning important things, but at the same time having fun. I prefer learning this way. I like being in charge of my own learning, thinking outside of the box, rather than being told.”
 
“This was a fun, challenging and exciting learning environment. This made it easier to remember the skills we needed and to use them effectively.”
 
“At the start of the challenge I didn’t have a clue what a spreadsheet was, but I enjoyed the challenge and felt proud that I could format the whole sheet myself and code new boxes when I needed to.”
 
“Communicating in a different language was challenging. However, it helped me to appreciate other people’s struggles to speak English. Our group worked cooperatively, making the most of individual talents.”
 
“It didn’t feel like we were learning. However, reflecting back on what we did, I realise I learnt and used a vast range of new skills.”
 
“It took me a matter of minutes to learn the properties and names of a massive amount of different 3D shapes. This was because I had a real purpose to learn. I was so proud when a visitor asked me questions on the properties and I blew him away with my knowledge and how confidently I was able to answer his questions.” 
 
“It helped me to understand the importance of working as a team. We all had a job to do. These were selected, because we could do that particular thing really well. It made me feel like it was an actual place of work and we were actually doing a ‘job’. Real-life situations like these help me to realise the importance of everyone’s unique abilities.” 

Gail Roberts is the MAT Coordinator, Maths Coordinator and Year 5 teacher at Llanfoist Fawr Primary School in Monmouthshire. She has worked in education since 1980, starting out as an NNEB with children with severe difficulties in basic life skills, and gaining her NPQH in 2007. Llanfoist Fawr gained the NACE Challenge Award in 2017, in recognition of school-wide commitment to high-quality provision for MAT learners within a context of challenge for all.

At last term’s NACE member meetup, hosted by The Science Museum, attendees shared tried-and-tested approaches to using questioning effectively to challenge all learners in science. Spanning all phases, and applicable across other subject areas, here are 10 ideas to try in your own classroom…

1. “Tinker time”

Rhian Roberts, Science Lead at Thomson House School, outlined the use of “tinker time” – time for learners to explore the question: “What do you know already?” As well as allowing teachers to assess current understanding and misconceptions to inform future planning, Rhian notes that this also allows pupils to take ownership of their learning, share knowledge with peers, and ask their own questions to move their learning forward.

A similar approach is used at Hydesville Tower School, where learners are prompted to list questions at the start of a new unit. Questions are then shared with peers for up-levelling using Bloom’s Taxonomy, and displayed to be addressed as the unit progresses. The impact, says Science Leader David Burnham, has included “increased ownership of learning, greater engagement, higher thought processes and a raised awareness of the broader scientific field.”

2. Question starters

At Ysgol Gyfun Garth Olwg, sentence stems are used to help learners develop increasingly challenging questions. For example, they might work as group to generate questions based on a photograph, using the following stems:

• Why do you think…?
• Can you explain why…?
• What evidence can you find…?
• Are there any other ways you could…?
• How successful was…?

Groups then swap questions and suggest answers to those posed by their peers. Dr Nia Griffiths, Head of Science, says this approach has led to higher engagement and longer-lasting focus on the task, as well as developing independent learning skills.

3. Solo exploration, double-up, present

At Invicta Grammar School, a three-stage process is used to answer a set of questions, shared out across the class. First, learners work independently on the questions they’ve been given, with support and resources available to develop a detailed response and identify potential discrepancies. They then pair up, collaborating to develop responses further. Finally, they present their work to the whole class, speaking as the “expert” on the questions they have investigated.

“Having worked on two sets of questions, students are doing almost twice as much work in the time available,” says Assistant Director of Science Charlotte McGivern. “They also develop skills to support one another, and the ability to articulate their answers fully.” She recommends jotting down prompters on post-it notes to share with learners during the first stage, helping them to fully explore each question.

4. “Phone a friend”

Peer support is also used at Bardfield Academy, where learners are encouraged to “phone a friend” to help them answer a question in more depth. Science Coordinator Heather Weston says this has meant learners feel more confident about asking for support, as well as providing opportunities for more able learners to share and develop their understanding by explaining difficult concepts to their peers.

To implement this effectively, Heather recommends encouraging learners to attempt to answer the question themselves first, using the “phone” option as a secondary measure to add depth and detail. She also suggests discussing the approach with more able learners separately to ensure they are ready and willing to be the “friend” at the end of the line.

5. Pose, pause, pounce, bounce

This four-stage approach to questioning was shared by Louise Mayhook, a member of the science department at The Bromfords School and Sixth Form College. First, pose a question to the class. Next: pause. Ask students to think, think again, write down and refine their response. Once the tension has mounted… pounce! Choose a student to share his/her answer and pause again to allow time for this. Finally, bounce: ask another student to comment on the first response.

Louise explains that this strategy embeds the effective use of thinking time, encourages learners to make notes (freeing up working memory), extends thinking, and challenges learners to listen closely to peers in order to build upon others’ ideas and develop a shared response.

6. Bouncing questions

Returning to Invicta Grammar School, here again questions are “bounced” from learner to learner – starting with a fairly simple question, and moving up through increasing levels of challenge towards synoptic questions that link with other areas of study. Biology teacher Hannah Gorski explains that this approach helps to build confidence and teamwork, while allowing the more able to develop and verbally consolidate their understanding of challenging concepts and links between them.

In a similar approach, Burton Borough School also “bounces” questions around the class. This time, learners prepare their own questions to ask peers. The first student chooses another to respond, who answers and in turn chooses the next. The school’s Jeremy Price notes that this approach has supported the development of strong subject knowledge and enjoyment, with learners motivated to come up with challenging questions for their classmates.

7. What happened first?

At Charterhouse Square School, learners are challenged to identify the correct order of events in science-related timelines. Given a set of milestone scientific achievements, discoveries and inventions, learners discuss their ideas about which happened first, providing arguments to back up their chronology. For an example of this, the school’s Amie Dickinson recommends the electrical inventions timeline game available via The Ogden Trust website.

In a similar vein, Science Coordinator Damian Cook shared an example from Oliver House School in which learners are challenged to analyse the elements of a food chain, answering the following questions:

• Why do you think this animal has been so successful at being at the top of the chain?
• What would it take for this animal to lose its position at the top?
  

For an additional challenge, learners are asked to consider which animal the top predator had evolved from, providing evidence to support their answer. Damian notes that once learners become accustomed to this approach, “they start to think like scientists and stretch their minds, which benefits their other studies – I hope!”

8. Visual prompts

The use of visual prompts alongside challenging questioning was a recurrent theme at the meetup. Shona Butler, Science Lead at St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School, shared the Explorify website as a useful source of engaging images and videos to prompt questions and discussion. She says this approach has helped learners develop confidence in considering a range of ideas, explaining their ideas and justifying their responses.

The Basildon Academies’ Michael Frempong and Hayley Richards – Heads of Science for the Lower and Upper Academies respectively – also advocated the use of pictures or objects to stimulate thinking and discussion. They noted that this allows all learners to contribute, while providing ample scope for learners to ask their own questions – of the objects, the teacher and each other.

9. “Fact first” questioning

To challenge learners to think in more depth about a subject, Drapers’ Academy’s Luxy Thanabalasingham shared the “fact first” approach – starting by giving learners a fact and challenging them to investigate further by generating “how” and “why” questions. Learners may work independently or in pairs, progressing to share their questions and ideas with the wider group. This is an effective way to move on from simple factual questions, Luxy says, encouraging learners to develop their higher-order thinking skills.

10. Write your own exam question

Finally, Weston Favell Academy’s Charlotte Heffernan shared her use of an activity in which learners are challenged to create their own exam questions and accompanying mark schemes. To get started, she suggests providing an answer and asking learners to suggest the question, or providing a question and asking learners to create the mark scheme.

Learners could also be challenged to create questions appropriate for different ability levels, considering what the examiner would be looking for and how key skills and knowledge could be assessed. This approach allows for self-differentiation, Charlotte notes, and has improved learners’ independence in answering questions.

Member resources

• Webinar: Effective questioning in science
• Webinar: Science capital: putting the research into practice
• NACE Essentials: Realising the potential of more able learners in GCSE science
• NACE Essentials: Using SOLO Taxonomy to increase challenge in the classroom
  

To access these resources, log in to our members’ site.

Published earlier this term (exclusively available to NACE members), the NACE Essentials guide to realising the potential of more able learners in GCSE science offers guidance for science leaders and teachers seeking to improve the quality of challenge in their lessons. In this excerpt, guide author Ed Walsh shares 10 “killer questions” all science departments should consider when reviewing provision for those capable of attaining the highest grades in the subject.

1. How close is the relationship between objectives and questions used in lessons and the outcomes and command words used in the exam specifications?

If the former are dominated by stems such as “know” and “understand”, how well will learners be prepared to answer higher-order exam questions with stems such as “suggest” and “justify”?

2. How are learners being encouraged to apply ideas to novel contexts?

It isn’t necessarily the case that topics should start with concepts and then progress to application; in some cases, application may be a good way to introduce a topic and develop ideas.

3. Are learners presented with evidence to analyse?

What opportunities do they have to engage with something such as a diagram or graph to make sense of and interpret? 

4. What common cause is being made with maths?

What might be learned if a science teacher were to observe more able learners being taught maths, and the maths teacher then to see them in science?

5. Are maths skills being ramped up?

It’s worth deconstructing stretch and challenge questions in terms of the maths skills and then thinking through how to teach these. As well as having mastery of individual skills, students need to be able to select and combine skills.

6. Is a good range of types of high-level questions being used?

Make sure these are not solely based on understanding complex ideas. When asking higher-level questions you can increase challenge by altering the stem of the question, broadening the range of command words you use. You can also ask for a longer response, possibly one that requires linking ideas from different parts of the subject.

7. Is the teacher modelling effective practice in answering extended questions?

Can students recognise such a question, and plan a structure and approach to answering it? Try modelling the construction of a high-quality response, showing how you select key terms, structure the writing and ensure it matches what the examiner is looking for.

8. How effectively is assessment data being used to identify development areas?

How well can learners complete the sentence “To get a good result in science I need to focus on…”? What’s guiding their revision?

9. How has data from the summer 2018 series been used to identify development areas?

It should be possible to interrogate candidate performance to answer questions such as “How well did high-attaining learners in my school cope with AO2 questions and how does this compare with the national picture?”

10. How well does KS3 prepare students for GCSE science?

Is the KS3 course doing its job in terms of getting more able learners to be “GCSE-ready”? How well does it support able learners to master key ideas, understand how to investigate various phenomena and use skills from other parts of the curriculum such as working numerically and developing written responses?

Read more…

• Log in to our members’ site for the full NACE Essentials guide to realising the potential of more able learners in GCSE science. 
• Not yet a member? Find out more.

1. Would it be better if we all spoke the same language?

2. Should celebrities influence you more than your parents?

3. Should you believe the history books?

4. Do humans need religion?