Guidance, ideas and examples to support schools in developing their curriculum, pedagogy, enrichment and support for more able learners, within a whole-school context of cognitively challenging learning for all. Includes ideas to support curriculum development, and practical examples, resources and ideas to try in the classroom. Popular topics include: curriculum development, enrichment, independent learning, questioning, oracy, resilience, aspirations, assessment, feedback, metacognition, and critical thinking.
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Posted By Neil Jones,
07 September 2020
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Neil Jones, NACE Associate
This article was originally published in our “beyond recovery” resource pack. View the original version here.
In the context of “recovering” teaching and learning at secondary level, I want to suggest that the principles of working with the most able learners remain the same. The crisis – as crises do – has provoked polarised responses: Tiggerish optimism about opportunities to change the way education works on the one hand; Eeyorish despair on the other, doubting whether anything can be recovered during or after this hiatus.
There is no doubt that this crisis has brought disasters with it for young people and their secondary education. But crises reveal, in a sharp and heightened way, what is already the case. It remains the case that schools need:
- To include the most able students explicitly in their thinking, for those students’ benefit and the benefit of all;
- To use current technology (the word “new” gives away how slow we can be), intelligently and responsively, to enable excellent work from the most able students, independently and collaboratively;
- To remember that teaching and learning, with the most able and with all students, is fundamentally a human relationship, not a consumer transaction.
Below are some suggestions that you may already be considering as you gear up to get back into the secondary classroom.
1. Take “accelerated learning” seriously – but don’t use it as “cramming”.
Tony Breslin, in the draft preface of his forthcoming book Lessons from Lockdown: the educational legacy of COVID-19 (Routledge, to be published end of 2020 / beginning of 2021), writes: "from a societal and educational standpoint, post-virus rehabilitation is not about how quickly we can get back to where we were. Nor is it about reconstituting our schools in the image of ‘crammer’ colleges, obsessed by catch-up and curriculum recovery, as if all the last few months have left us with is a shortcoming in knowledge and a loss of coverage." [Emphasis mine]
This is an important point, worth serious reflection. Teachers and most parents will understandably be anxious to make up for lost time and lost learning, particularly those whose children and students are at the pinch points of transition between key stages. Breslin continues: "Rather, it is about how far we can travel in light of our shared experience, and the different educational and training needs that will surely manifest themselves in the years ahead. It is also about acknowledging those longstanding shortcomings at the heart of our schooling and education systems, around persistent inequalities of outcome, around the need to build inclusion and attainment alongside each other rather than posing them as different and sometimes conflicting opposites, and around attending to the wellbeing of children, their families and all who support their learning – as if we could build a sustainable education system without doing this." [Emphases mine]
Most teachers would agree, surely, with the wisdom here. “Cramming” or force-feeding our students course content as if we were fattening geese, would be horribly stressful, and pedagogically ineffective in the long term. Yet there is an opportunity for us, instead of “cramming”, to take accelerated learning very seriously indeed.
In his article exploring current priorities and opportunities for primary schools, NACE Associate Dr Keith Watson highlights Mary Myatt’s insistence on professionals paring back course content to the essentials. He is, of course, right to point out the dangers of narrowing the curriculum even further. As an English teacher, I understand why the GCSE exam boards have elected to remove poetry from the exams, but it chills my blood to think of the lost potential for thought, feeling and understanding that this represents – particularly for our more able students.
I do wonder, though, whether we now have an opportunity to introduce just a little more urgency – but not panic – into teaching and learning. Accelerated learning strategies aim to achieve both inclusion and attainment in learning, in the ways that NACE has advocated for so many years: help your most able students to go as far and fast as they can; teach to the top, support from the bottom, and so on. This approach should still be used; we will just have to use it on less material. Don’t over-rehearse, i.e. don’t plan to teach new Year 10 students six months of missed Year 9 course content first. Do over-learn, with regular, no-stakes tests to embed knowledge and build confidence and mastery. Crucially, teach what needs to be taught now and scaffold knowledge and skills “just in time.”
A document that has garnered interest, originating from the US, is the Learning Acceleration Guide published by TNTP. Like anything, you’ll not want to swallow it wholesale, but it does give a range of sensible suggestions, including those set out above. The main thrust is that we should not panic about teaching new material, as if the students will never be ready for it. Instead, teaching new and necessary material, if scaffolded, can prompt memory of previous learning and help students “catch up” by stealth, rather than by “remedial action” that brings their learning up to speed to where they should have been, rather than where they could be now. This is clearly a leading attribute of the challenging classroom at any time in history, pre- or post-COVID. 2. Be bold with remote learning – “homework” could be transformed.
You may have found yourself cursing Zoom, Loom, Vidyard, Microsoft Teams or Google Classroom at several stages over lockdown; or you may have been excited to learn how to use them, because you had to. Most likely, like me, you felt both. But I can’t complain any longer that I don’t have time to learn about “flipped learning”. For those students with access to a laptop, we should continue to experiment with how far we can enable students to work independently and with each other. Again, this is an opportunity for us to make a virtue of necessity.
At our school, and I’m sure at yours, our departments have put in place planning and resources that can be both taught in the classroom and remotely. A lot of labour has been put into producing packs of work. For the more able students, however, we mustn’t stop offering exciting invitations to push their interest further.
For the last two years, I’ve been able to group the most able students by subject and year cohort and set them up to research and write up their own projects, guided by their interest. I have been impressed and inspired by how well I could trust students to be “entrepreneurial” in their independent work, supported pretty minimally by caring subject specialists, but a lot by each other. We use Microsoft Teams to enable this, and I would point you to Amy Clark’s blog post on this topic for further possibilities in using Teams. See too, the recorded NACE webinar on using technological platforms to develop independence (member login required).
Our students, in these times and in all times, should be putting in at least as much creative labour as their teachers. A remarkable result of more enforced student independence is how much more we can trust them to adapt, re-combine and invent new responses to the information and tasks we give them. Many students, at all key stages, are adept at using technology in a way that most of their teachers haven’t been.
Consider, too, how you can use technology to gather student voice so that you know how your most able students are faring; and even better, garner suggestions from them of how they would like to extend the curriculum, so that they feel they have a say in the direction of educational travel. As always, these students’ insights into their experiences of teaching and learning bring us priceless information on what’s going well and what’s not. Online platforms make this process so much easier now.
3. “Humanity first” – but that doesn’t necessarily mean “teaching second”.
Barry Carpenter’s work on the very notion of a “recovery curriculum” has received widespread coverage among school leaders and teachers. At one stage in his talk for the Chartered College of Teaching, Carpenter urged teachers to “walk in with your humanity first, and your teaching skills second.” In the context of the therapeutic, wellbeing-centred vision for recovery from the shocks and anxieties of the last year, this clearly makes sense. With more able students in mind, however, and especially the exceptionally able students we teach, we must remember that study is an intrinsic part of their humanity: they are one and the same thing.
Again, then, crisis reveals what is already present. Our more able students will still need to know, in their relationships with their teachers and with supportive peers, that it is cool to be clever, interesting to be interested, exciting to be excited by the discoveries involved in learning. They do not need to be glum, or despair that they have stopped learning, because we can be confident that we are always learning if we have a mind to, and seek – as Dr Matthew Williams advocates – to turn work into study.
Those interesting questions that we pose; that palpable delight in our own subject interest; those personalised phrases of praise; the hints and foretastes of exciting future study and work – all those confident connection-points with our more able students are always vital, and continue to be so as we all move forward into an uncertain “first term back”. I found at the end of the summer term, teaching small bubble-groups of sixth formers, that they were desperate to talk and explore what was going on. So was I! This is clearly no surprise. The teaching skill required here will be to move between the personal and the abstract, as it always is in pedagogy worth the name.
Our most able students often think and feel things at a greater intensity. Managing this intensity with the general intensity of the overall experience of socially distanced schooling will take skill and humanity – but we as teachers are not in uncharted waters here: it is what we do under normal circumstances, too.
Join the conversation: NACE member meetup, 10 September 2020
Join secondary leaders and practitioners from across the country on 10 September for an online NACE member meetup exploring approaches to the recovery curriculum and beyond. The session will open with a presentation from NACE Associate Neil Jones, followed by a chance to share approaches and ideas with peers, reflecting on some of the challenges and opportunities outlined above. Find out more and book your place.
Not yet a NACE member? Starting at just £95 +VAT per year, NACE membership is available for schools (covering all staff), SCITT providers, TSAs, trusts and clusters. Bringing together school leaders and practitioners across England, Wales and internationally, our members have access to advice, practical resources and CPD to support the review and improvement of provision for more able learners within a context of challenge and high standards for all. Learn more and join today.
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Posted By Edmund Walsh,
11 March 2020
Updated: 09 September 2020
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Alongside his workshop on this topic, NACE Associate Ed Walsh shares five ways to refresh your approach to GCSE science for high-attaining students...
1. Think BEYOND the exams
First, let me make clear that I’m not arguing for a dilution of effort with students being prepared for examination. Good GCSE grades are important, providing passports to the next phase. There’s also a risk that if highly able students don’t get top grades in science, they may assume this field is not for them and pursue other avenues.
However, focusing your attention beyond the exams – and encouraging learners to do the same – has two immediately obvious benefits. For many students, seeing the subject in a wider context is in fact exactly what they need to engage them whilst working towards exams. Second, if students see science as more than a “hard slog” driven by GCSE exam preparation, it is more likely they will look favourably on science and other STEM subjects when considering options post-16.
2. Don’t rely on the assertion that “science is everywhere” to convince students they should study it
I often hear words to this effect when interviewing teacher training candidates, and I’m never very impressed. Whilst obviously true, it may not carry much weight with an unconvinced 15-year-old. As the EEF report Improving Secondary Science suggests, there is a difference between students seeing science as generally significant and powerful (which many of them do), and seeing it as personally relevant or “for them”.
There’s scope here for us to rethink the way we “sell” science. While pointing out its prevalence can be useful, we also need to highlight the wide range of skills and ideas it develops – thinking logically, analysing evidence, identifying causal links – which have currency far beyond any narrowly defined scientific context. Being good at science opens far more doors than just the ones that lead to research labs.
3. Provide opportunities for meaningful science experiences…
Recent research suggests that higher rates of science capital correlate with a stronger likelihood of learners pursuing continuing education, training and employment in STEM subjects. Of the four components of science capital – what you know, how you think, what you do and who you know – the formal science curriculum is generally pretty good at developing the first two. However, it’s in everyone’s best interests for science departments to expand their focus on the latter two – what you do and who you know – particularly where learners have few opportunities to develop these outside school.
To address the “what you do” component, seek out and promote opportunities for learners to engage with science and to see science in action – such as science-related news stories and documentaries, local visits and events, and extracurricular hobbies and interests. Where possible, build on learners’ existing interests and activities.
4. … and inspiring encounters
“Who you know” is also key. It can be incredibly powerful for a young person to have someone say to them, as an individual, that they’d be good at being a scientist, studying engineering, going into technology or taking maths to a higher level. Lots of STEM professionals had this experience – a key encounter with someone from their extended family, local community or through an organised activity.
For many young scientists these experiences and encounters don’t necessarily happen through school – but for some if they don’t happen through school they probably won’t at all. Examples I’ve seen recently paying dividends in this area are the Greenpower Challenge and, for A-level students, Nuffield Research Placements. The services of a good STEM Ambassador are a real asset too.
5. Reframe the goals of KS3
During secondary science CPD events, I often ask: “Is your KS3 course doing its job?” This starts as a discussion about the role of key ideas and developing enquiry skills in preparation for GCSE. However, we could also make the case for KS3 being judged on its capacity to inspire and engage. Do learners get to see how science not only changes lives but can be engaging, intriguing and rewarding? Do activities make students not just “GCSE ready”, but confident and capable? As Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re probably right.”
With experience as a secondary head of science, county science adviser and a regional and senior adviser for the Secondary National Strategy, Ed Walsh is an independent consultant in science education. With a proven track record in helping schools improve their science provision, he has published widely in the field, and developed and delivered training for teachers and heads of science, including on behalf of organisations such as ASE and AQA. As a NACE associate, Ed designs and delivers training and resources to support effective teaching and learning for the more able in science.
This blog post was originally published in a longer form at SchoolsImprovement.net
Additional reading and resources
- NACE Essentials: Realising the potential of more able learners in GCSE science
- NACE Essentials: CEIAG for more able learners
- Webinar: Science capital – putting the research into practice
- Webinar: Effective questioning in science
To access these resources, log in to the NACE members’ site.
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Posted By Tracy Goodyear,
17 October 2019
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Ahead of her workshop on this topic, NACE Associate and Head of English Tracy Goodyear shares three key considerations when planning a challenging KS3 English curriculum.
After getting the ‘new’ GCSEs firmly under our belts, schools and departments across the country are now being given the space to carefully consider the quality of the diet that all students receive in their secondary years.
For any department, reviewing the curriculum is an ongoing process. There’s no quick win or easy fix: it takes vision, clarity of thought and careful consideration – all whilst trying to navigate an educational, social and political landscape that is constantly shifting.
There’s an imperative to provide students with a curriculum that is enlightening, challenging and enriching. As emphasised in the current Ofsted education inspection framework, the curriculum should be ambitious and appropriate for all students. It’s vital that complex concepts or ideas are not ignored or brushed over, and that the expectation for success and high achievement is clear. A rising tide lifts all boats, after all.
Here are some key considerations, which we’ll explore in more detail during November’s workshop.
1. Start with the end in mind
When planning a new/revised curriculum, it’s imperative to consider what the end ‘product’ is likely to look like. In other words, ask yourselves: “At the end of Year 9, if we had given the students what they really need in our subject, what sort of behaviours, skills and attributes would our students display? How will we know we have been successful?”
This goes much further than hitting target grades; we have to think beyond that. As Christine Counsell has written, “If the curriculum itself is the progression model, then the numbers change their meaning.”
During a department meeting a couple of years ago, we brainstormed some ideas about our ‘finished article’ and came up with the following statements. These are core departmental values that drive our curriculum design and delivery.
As a result of learning in our department, students will:
- Be creative, articulate, imaginative learners, who are confident and secure in their opinions and thoughts;
- Be adaptable and flexible communicators in spoken and written word;
- Be unafraid to challenge complex ideas and material.
Our students will develop these dispositions and habits:
- Having a critical eye, so that they do not blindly accept things;
- They will openly welcome feedback, criticism and differing views and interpretations and not feel threatened by these;
- They will be skilled in planning, showing evidence of deep thinking;
- They will take risks, knowing that the learning they will experience is more valuable than the fear of failure;
- They will actively listen to and reason with the ideas and expertise of others;
- They will construct meaningful arguments, supporting their ideas with confidence and conviction.
They will experience learning activities that:
- Have pace, choice and challenge;
- Provide a healthy combination of independent and collaborative work;
- Give them ample opportunity to speak in front of others;
- Give them the time and space to write independently;
- Offer the choice and autonomy to self-select activities that best challenge their thinking and ability;
- Are well-planned by the teacher/ department, where activities have clear direction and purpose;
- Enable them to build a sophisticated vocabulary, consistently;
- Are academically rigorous and personally challenging.
2. Why this? Why now?
Once you have firm statements in place and a clear vision, you can start to consider the content and the validity of current content being delivered.
There are a whole host of questions to consider. Here are just a few:
- Is it important to you that students know the origins of stories/ origins of language?
- Is it important that students understand how or why contextual factors may influence our reception of a text?
- Is it important that they understand the five act structure of a Shakespeare play?
- Is it important that they are able to speak knowledgeably in a debate or a group discussion?
- Is it important to you that they can write with originality and flair?
Sitting as a team and deciding the answers to these sorts of questions is hugely valuable. It encourages teachers to share their particular passions and interests and leads to purposeful discussion about your curriculum offer. It’s important that you consider your own school’s context too – what is important here? What is it vital that we equip our students with? Vocabulary instruction? Cultural capital?
3. Timing is everything!
When planning a challenging curriculum, there is a temptation to hurtle through centuries of literature at a pace; the temptation to move on and cover as much content as possible seems attractive when teaching able young people. However, any successful curriculum needs to build in purposeful time to reflect – to recognise how concepts fit together as part of a much wider picture. All students require time to reflect on feedback (and time to act on it!), time for repetition, recall and a deeper investigation into a topic or idea.
Time is crucial in the breaking down of complex tasks, too. The EEF’s recent report Improving Literacy in Secondary Schools stresses the importance of modelling and scaffolding at all levels and dedicating curriculum time to this. Breaking tasks down (rather than simplifying them!) helps students to navigate their way through challenging tasks more effectively.
Consider the various demands on a student’s working memory when asked to write. How can teachers intervene to break down some of these processes to ensure working memories are not overwhelmed? How can we ensure that our curriculum plan incorporates the time and space to enable us to do this?
It’s not just the timing of what is being taught that’s key. Timely reflection for you and your team is also crucial. Wherever possible, make reviewing aspects of your curriculum part of your weekly/ fortnightly meetings. Speak about how students are progressing, where misunderstandings have arisen, how a scheme or unit of work needs to be adapted to suit the changing needs of the students. If all curriculum review does not take place while it’s still fresh, many of those smaller, nuanced observations about learning could be lost.
Enjoy the challenge!
Recommended reading:
- Turner, S. (2016), Secondary Curriculum and Assessment Design, Bloomsbury
- Myatt, M. (2018), The Curriculum: Gallimaufry to Coherence, John Catt
Ready to review your KS3 curriculum?
Join Tracy Goodyear’s workshop on 28 November: Leading curriculum change for more able learners in KS3 English
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Posted By Charlotte Bourne,
16 October 2019
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Charlotte Bourne, Deputy Head of Learning at Shakespeare’s Globe, shares four places to get started with the free online resources developed by the theatre’s education team.
As well as being an iconic cultural venue, Shakespeare’s Globe provides free resources for schools, supporting teachers to create learning opportunities that provide challenge for all. With materials available for teachers and learners across all phases, our education resources are designed to:
· Offer flexibility within the teaching of Shakespeare through active approaches, rehearsal room techniques or technology – giving opportunities for children to flourish across a range of domains;
· Add breadth to learners’ understanding of vocabulary through interrogating language choices;
· Add depth to leaners’ understanding of the relationship between Shakespeare’s texts and their contexts;
· Use them as a springboard to wider learning opportunities, such as homework projects or longer-term investigations.
Each year we also run a “Playing Shakespeare” microsite which tracks a production as it is developed and performed. This year’s microsite is dedicated to Macbeth (details below).
Ready to go deeper with Shakespeare? Here are four places to get started…
Great for an introduction to Shakespeare or a focus on context, the Globe website’s ‘Discover’ zone provides a wealth of information on: the history of Shakespeare’s Globe(s); factsheets about Shakespeare's world; blog posts from the Globe; music at the Globe; ‘ask an actor’ podcasts.
Our fact sheets – on Shakespeare, London, writing plays, actors, indoor theatre, special effects, the first Globe, playhouses, audiences, and costumes and cosmetics – are particularly useful for introducing students to Elizabethan and Jacobean contexts in an accessible way at KS2, and can easily be adapted to your lesson objectives. For example:
· Support the development of critical literacy skills: “We have very few accounts of how the audience behaved, and most of them are about ‘bad’ behaviour. This probably tells us more about what was considered ‘news’ than about how audiences behaved all the time.”
· Introduce learners to how performance conditions impact on texts: “There were practical reasons why some plays were better suited to indoor theatres. Indoor theatres had a small stage (about half the size of an outdoor theatre’s stage). There were also stools allowed on the stage: the most expensive seats, where rich ‘gallants’ sat to be seen as well as to watch. This gave the actors far less space for big battles or crowd scenes. On the other hand, the smaller space and the candlelight enhanced a play’s magical effects.” This could be followed by an investigation into which of Shakespeare’s plays learners think would suit each type of theatre.
An interactive filmmaker for desktops and tablets, Staging It aims to help learners understand Shakespeare’s texts from a director’s perspective and offers the option to virtually stage a scene at the Globe.
Actors are filmed performing a moment of a play on the Globe stage. Each line of their speech is shot four times, each time performed in different ways (happy, flirtatious, defensive, etc.). Students decide which clips to add to the dynamic storyboard to build a final scene. They can then interrogate the choices they made, and the impact of these on how each character is perceived.
These resources support students in recognising that the text is a conscious construct, shaped by the context in which it is received – vital preparation for GCSE English that can be introduced at KS3 through this resource.
Follow-up questions can be used to support the development of critical thinking: How am I looking at this character? What leads me to have this viewpoint? What does my viewpoint ignore? Is there another way to look at them? How might [a different culture/gender etc.] view them? Which of these possible viewpoints makes the most sense given the text? This could be modelled in advance by the teacher, as “revealing the thought processes of an expert learner helps to develop [these types of] metacognitive skills” (EEF, 2018).
The Globe’s website for teachers, Teach Shakespeare provides hundreds of learning resources in multiple formats: photos, video clips from previous productions, synopses, audio interviews, fact sheets and schemes of work. Designed with input from teachers, the site can be searched by age range, play, format, or purpose (e.g. lesson plan/exam revision). No signup is needed to access the resources.
Many of these resources incorporate rehearsal room techniques. These have experimentation, collaboration and reflection at their heart, and encourage students to make their own discoveries about the text.
For example, this resource suggests the activity ‘walking the line’ to investigate Shakespeare’s use of metre: foot up on unstressed syllables and down on stressed syllables, noticing and commenting on irregularities in the ‘Gallop apace’ speech in Act 3 Scene 2 of ‘Romeo and Juliet’. The ‘commenting’ is particularly important, because it is the collaborate nature of reflection that helps further the metacognitive talk referenced above. We provide video clips showing the actors undertaking some of these techniques, to model the insights that come through actively exploring the text in this way.
This site provides a gateway to all our previous production-specific websites created as part of the Playing Shakespeare project, each of which tracks a production from rehearsal to final performance. This year’s microsite is dedicated to Macbeth, with previous productions covered including Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Othello, The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew. Each of these sites contains photos, interviews with the cast and director, design briefs, articles and teaching activities.
The interviews with cast members give students the opportunity to unpick the texts in performance – a key aspect in appreciating the form. Listen to several Macbeths discussing their interpretations, for example, can help students understand that, unlike a novel, a drama text is incomplete on the page.
There are research articles on particular plays, written for a KS3-4 audience moving to focus in more detail on the relationship between text and context. These provide a rich exploration of writer's craft that cannot be separated from context, and can be used to model the integrated approach to this required for higher-level literary analysis.
Our Macbeth 2020 website has launched and will begin tracking the production in January!
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Posted By Edmund Walsh,
08 October 2019
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Ahead of his workshop on this topic, NACE Associate Ed Walsh shares seven key components of a challenging KS3 science curriculum…
“Is our KS3 course doing its job?” This is one of the most powerful questions a science leader in a secondary school can ask.
The new GCSE courses are no longer really new; many teachers are finding their way around the specifications, developing aspects such as the running order of topics, time allocated to activities and applying emphasis to areas that results analyses indicate are deficient.
There, is, of course, a limit as to what can be achieved within KS4. If students are starting on their GCSE courses with limitations in their grasp of science then the more effective solution may lie in KS3. I’d like to share some ideas as to how learners, especially the most able, can be effectively catered for at this stage. It is, of course, relatively easy to pose questions and harder work to identify answers. With this in mind I’ve also included some links to useful references and resources.
1. Talk the (science) talk
What language is being used in lessons? Are students being supported, challenged and expected to ‘talk science’? This needs to go beyond knowing the right names for objects, to also having a command of connectives. Would an observer in your classroom catch use of words and phrases such as ‘because’, ‘therefore’ and ‘as a result of’ – not just by the teacher but by students as they are developing explanations?
Read more: Useful materials on speaking and listening can be found in Session 4 of the National Strategies Literacy in Science Training Materials.
2. Ensure practical work adds value
What is the role of practical work in your science teaching and learning? Is it exploratory as well as illustrative? Does it prompt questions and ideas? Is it effective at developing the apparatus and techniques skills needed at GCSE so that able learners have, for example, mastered the use of microscopes by the time they start GCSE courses and can then concentrate on other aspects of investigations?
Read more: The newly published ASE/Gatsby report Good Practical Science provides benchmarks to support departments seeking to improve the effectiveness of practical science teaching.
3. Review your use of questioning and command words
What kind of questions are being asked? A good starting point is to look at the command words used in GCSE specifications and consider whether students are being exposed to these all the way through their secondary science experience. As well as ‘describe’ and ‘explain’, are able learners being asked to evaluate, compare, contrast and suggest? As well as closed and specific questions, are you posing open and exploratory questions?
Read more: Guidance on questioning is provided in unit 7 of Pedagogy and Practice: Teaching and Learning in Secondary Schools (DfES).
4. Develop writing (quality, not quantity)
What is the role of writing? This is not a plea for lengthy, exhaustive (and exhausting) experimental writeups or even necessarily for anything of any length. It’s more that there is a case for getting students producing short pieces of high-quality writing that do a particular job well. This might be, for example, comparing and contrasting different materials for a car body, suggesting and justifying an energy provision plan for a particular location or analysing a graph that shows how different carrier bags respond to loads.
Read more: Useful materials on writing can be found in Session 3 of the National Strategies Literacy in Science Training Materials.
5. Ensure key concepts are covered and revisited
Have the ‘cornerstone concepts’ been effectively introduced and revisited? Is the concept of energy well developed and do students understand what is meant by an ecosystem? Such key concepts can be seen as tools that scientists can reach for when developing explanations; able learners should become more proficient in doing this.
Read more: An overview of how key ideas can be planned for in KS3 is provided in AQA’s KS3 Science Syllabus.
6. Respond to learners’ needs
How responsive is the teaching to nurturing able learners and focusing on their learning needs? If these students are going to realise their potential at the end of GCSE then their KS3 experience needs to be tailored to areas in which they need a good grounding. For example, if they’re confident with the concept of a chemical reaction but less familiar with different types of reaction, can the latter be made a particular focus? Students who feel they are ‘treading water’ may not perform to the best of their ability.
Read more: A really good reference source on this is Dylan Wiliam’s Embedded Formative Assessment (2011, Solution Tree, 978-1-934009-30-7)
7. Develop science capital
Students are more likely to succeed if they see a purpose to their learning. Are there opportunities for them to see the doors that are open to young people who are competent and keen in STEM subjects? A good example of resources recently published to support this are the Royal Society’s series of videos with Professor Brian Cox – as well as demonstrating how experiments can be done in schools, they also show why these ideas are important and useful in society and highlight the cutting-edge research in each area.
Read more: This blog post from The Science Museum’s Beth Hawkins provides a useful introduction to the concept of science capital and how it can be developed. Plus, watch our webinar on this topic (member login required).
For additional support to develop your provision for more able learners in science, sign in as a NACE member to access Ed Walsh's NACE Essentials guide to realising the potential of more able learners in GCSE science, and recorded webinar on effective questioning in science.
Not yet a NACE member? Find out more, and join our mailing list for free updates and free sample resources.
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Posted By Charlotte Bourne, Globe Education,
12 April 2019
Updated: 03 June 2019
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Charlotte Bourne, Deputy Head of Learning at Shakespeare’s Globe, shares four examples of free resources available via the Globe’s 2019 website on Romeo and Juliet, focusing on the development of Assessment Objective 2.
My last blog selected four resources from Shakespeare's Globe’s 2019 Romeo and Juliet website and explained how these could be used to address the needs of more able learners, within a context of challenge for all. Here, I want to drill down into one specific assessment objective within GCSE English literature and discuss four more resources that can support teaching and learning within this area. As ever, these resources are provided free of charge and form part of the Globe's commitment to increasing access to Shakespeare.
Studying a different play? Fear not… Through the Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank project, Shakespeare's Globe also offers dedicated resource websites on:
You can also visit the Globe’s Teach Shakespeare website for hundreds of free resources, searchable by play, key stage and resource type.
AO2: analysing the creation of “meaning and effects”
Assessment Objective 2 (AO2) requires learners to “analyse the language, form and structure used by a writer to create meanings and effects, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate.”
Many of our resources begin with the “meaning and effects” that have been created. It is incredibly hard for learners to analyse a feature if it creates no effect on them, or if the meaning is obscure. Start with what interests them, or what stands out, then break it down to consider why and how this is the case.
This positions them as active learners and moves them beyond feature-spotting at word-level – important as better GCSE responses discuss the structure and dramatic impact of the text.
Furthermore, broadening learners’ understanding of ways in which meanings can be shaped – particularly in relation to Shakespeare and drama – will support their further study within the subject. Finally, this also supports learners to appreciate the text from the outside: as a conscious construct, a myriad of the writer’s choices, and the characters and plot as vehicles to carry the text’s meanings.
Read on for four free resources to help your learners develop in AO2…
The weekly blog by the Assistant Director takes learners behind the scenes of a theatre production. For AO2, this is helpful to reiterate the form, as the process – and fluidity – of interpretation of drama texts is brought to the fore: this is what we mean by “text in performance”.
The lesson activity accompanying week 1's blog looks at how Romeo changes his speech when speaking to Mercutio as opposed to speaking to Juliet, and what Shakespeare is therefore trying to suggest about his character. As well as familiarisation with different parts of the play, the comparative element draws on a higher-order thinking skill.
This activity is invaluable in foregrounding the form: as James Stredder notes, plays “are essentially speech utterances” (2009). It begins by grounding the real-world application of communication accommodation theory (see Howard Giles), applying this to Shakespeare's craft. The text-work starts with reading aloud to allow pupils to feel the different meanings and effects of each Romeo-construction (speech!). Learners then return to the blog to examine the “how” of these constructions, comparing the use of verse and prose.
This resource uses an interview with the actor playing Mercutio as a springboard for exploration. Linked to AO2, this is another way of emphasising the form and its impact on interpretation. The activity invites learners to examine textual evidence in order to decide to what extent they agree with the actor's interpretation. To add challenge, learners are asked to compare Mercutio's language with Romeo's on a particular theme: love. This pushes learners to unpick how each character's speech is used as a vehicle to convey different conceptions of love.
The next activity uses the actor's interpretation to analyse the impact Mercutio's character has on the dramatic structure: they compare Mercutio's timeline with the main events of the play, and consider to what extent Shakespeare uses Mercutio to drive the events that lead to the tragedy. AO3 is integrated with AO2 through the option to debate Mercutio's primary purpose as exploring the relationship between comedy and tragedy.
Both of these activities demand learners use references from different parts of the play and use a range of higher-order thinking skills to draw out the effect of Shakespeare's choices in constructing Mercutio.
One of the most complex, but also wonderfully rich, episodes in Romeo and Juliet is Mercutio's Queen Mab speech. The week 3 blog provides an insight into how the cast worked with this, and the accompanying lesson activity builds on this. It starts by asking learners to draw the images Mercutio creates at each stage of the speech (bar the last one), which helps in untangling the meaning. They then specify which words and phrases contributed to each section of their drawings, supporting with the precision of their analysis.
Learners then create freeze-frames of each image, reflecting on which words and phrases have had the greatest effect. The chronological sharing of these freeze-frames facilitates an interrogation of the structure: how does the speech change as it progresses? Learners then predict what the last image of the speech might be. After the revelation, read-aloud work furthers the focus on learners making choices about which words create the greatest effect here, only afterwards drilling down into language techniques. Learners finally consider how the messages within this speech could link to the wider themes of the play.
This resource is comprised of an article from the production programme on the language of love and hate in Romeo and Juliet, with accompanying lesson activities. The article deepens understanding of antithesis and oxymoron by exploring the relationship between them and providing examples from the play; however, perhaps most crucially, it models the relationship between the writer's message and how this is expressed in the language patterns of the play.
Patterns are key here: the lesson activities focus on speeches by Romeo and Juliet from different parts of the play to examine how Shakespeare uses the oxymoron to link the eponymous characters while simultaneously drawing important distinctions between them. Thus, learners are asked to analyse language and then consider how the structure impacts on the meaning of each instance.
To access these resources, plus a wealth of additional resources to support a challenging curriculum, visit 2019.playingshakespeare.org. Remember: the website tracks the production so please keep coming back to see what else we have added!
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Posted By Charlotte Bourne, Globe Education,
12 February 2019
Updated: 08 April 2019
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Shakespeare’s tragic tale of young love rarely fails to capture the imagination, but how can you help learners approach it with a fresh perspective – interrogating, comparing, contextualising and analysing in depth? Charlotte Bourne, Deputy Head of Learning at Shakespeare’s Globe, shares four free resources to breathe new life into your English literature lessons…
Every March, Shakespeare’s Globe becomes a cauldron of excitement as our high-octane, flagship education project, “ Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank” begins. We provide 18,000 free tickets to a full-scale Shakespeare production tailored for 11-18 year olds. Alongside this, each year we create a dedicated website that complements and tracks the production. Although our free tickets target London and Birmingham state schools, the website is open to all, completely free, and doesn't require any sign-up; it forms part of the Globe's commitment to making Shakespeare accessible for all. This article highlights four resources from our 2019 website on Romeo and Juliet and explains how these could be used to address the needs of more able learners, within a context of challenge for all. Whilst these explanations focus on GCSE English literature, the resources can all be adapted to provide any learner with the opportunity to “[read], understand and respond to texts... and develop an informed personal response.”
Our “script machines” display the script of five key scenes from the play, but with a twist: you have the option of showing the director's edit. This enables you to unpick AO2 more organically with learners, because the interplay between language (Shakespeare's text) and form (a script to be edited for the stage) becomes apparent. For example:
Juliet: O, sweet my mother, cast me not away!
Delay this marriage for a month, a week;
Or, if you do not, make the bridal bed
In that dim monument where Tybalt lies.
- What do the cut lines convey in terms of meaning?
- What does removing them achieve?
- What meaning is the director drawing our attention towards, or away from, through this edit?
This serves as a reminder that, in any performance text, there is more than one conscious construct at work. Although learners will need to know the whole text, the “meanings and effects” (AO2) has a greater plurality when considered in this light.
Indeed, this can also lead to discussions around the context: the origins of Shakespeare's writing, shaped by the theatre practices of his day, mean that even modern editions of the same, full play-text may differ. What an audience receives, therefore, is already layered with interpretation.
This part of the resource gives learners the opportunity to identify where certain literary techniques are being used by Shakespeare, across five key scenes. This can be used as a revision tool, but why not use it to model the thought processes in understanding how these techniques work to create meanings and effects? This moves learners away from the fallacy of technique-spotting, and can be adapted for KS3 and KS4.
With this in mind, several techniques in each scene are broken down into a series of questions, on our Teachers’ Notes page. For example:
- Tybalt describes the servants as “heartless hinds”. How does this metaphor show that Tybalt has a low opinion of the servants? Use the questions below to support your thinking.
- What possible meanings does the word “hind” have?
- How about the word “heartless”? Hint: remember that Shakespeare’s audience would have heard the play; “heartless” could also therefore be heard as “hart-less”. How could this link to “hind”?
- Consider the effect of the alliteration in making this link.
- How does this contribute to the servants’ definition of masculinity set up in the opening exchange between Sampson and Gregory?
To extend the challenge, learners could then create their own questions to deconstruct other techniques. Creating these questions demands higher-order thinking, as learners need to be at Bloom's level of “analysis” before attempting this. To scaffold them up to this level of challenge, they could look at how the same technique is deconstructed in a different scene. This has the added benefit of highlighting the nuanced effects of the same technique used in different parts of the text.
Brooke's 1562 poem, “The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet”, served as a key source for Shakespeare. So far, so bolt-on AO3. However, this resource allows learners to compare the differences between Shakespeare's prologue and Brooke's “argument”. It highlights how Shakespeare’s drama occurs over just five days, whereas Brooke’s poem unfolds over nine months, and that Juliet’s age is lowered from 16 to 13.
Drawing out these differences allows for rich exploration of writer's craft that cannot be separated from context, required for the top bands at GCSE.
- Have learners compare the time reference in Brooke's “argument” with Shakespeare's prologue, and discuss what effect this might have.
- Next, ask learners to find all the references to time within Shakespeare's version; what patterns do they spot? Why is it that time seems to pass so quickly in the play? Consider this also in light of Shakespeare's younger Juliet.
- What meaning is being created through these marked changes to the original source material? If time is compacted and Juliet is younger, what might this suggest about the speed of young love?
- How does the adaptation of form – from poem to play – affect how it is received?
Providing learners with the opportunity to engage with text in performance is a cornerstone of the work we do, and part of this involves providing access to actors taking part in the production.
Although learners wouldn't need to analyse actors' interpretations in their exam, the character interviews provide a window into hearing how someone else arrived at an informed, personal response (AO1). Questions cover: What are your initial impressions of your character(s)? What have you noticed about your character’s language, i.e. the way they speak to others/about themselves?
Characters are interviewed several times across the production, providing learners with opportunities to reflect on the complex nature of interpretation: how this can be revised with each more detailed exploration of the text.
To access these resources, plus a wealth of additional resources to support a challenging curriculum, visit 2019.playingshakespeare.org. Remember: the website tracks the production so please keep coming back to see what else we have added!
Charlotte Bourne is Deputy Head of Learning at Shakespeare’s Globe, with a focus on learners aged 3-18, plus the educators who support them. The Globe’s on-site Lively Action programme welcomes close to 80,000 learners per year, while its international outreach work sends practitioners to China, the US and Europe. A qualified English teacher and AQA examiner for GCSE Literature, Charlotte has worked closely with ITTs and NQTs across multiple subjects.
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Posted By Edmund Walsh,
05 February 2019
Updated: 22 December 2020
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In this excerpt from the NACE Essentials guide “Realising the potential of more able learners in GCSE science”, NACE Associate Ed Walsh explores the components of a challenging GCSE science exam question – and how teachers can best help learners prepare.
There is sometimes an assumption that it is the complexity of the content that is the key determinant in how challenging an exam question is; this isn’t necessarily the case. In fact, there are a variety of ways in which questions can be made more challenging, and in order to support learners with high target grades this needs to be understood.
When preparing your learners for the most challenging GCSE science exam questions, here are six aspects to consider:
1. Reduced scaffolding and multiple steps
Whereas some questions continue to be structured and are specific about what understanding or application should be demonstrated, there will be other questions where learners need to work out the sequence of stages to be undertaken. This might, for example, involve using one equation to calculate a value which is then substituted into another. As well as being able to (in some cases) recall the equations and use them, learners also need to work out the overall strategy.
Encourage learners to get into this habit by asking: “What’s a good way of approaching this question?”
2. Extended response questions
Extended responses are frequently marked using a level of response mark scheme. If there are six marks allocated, the mark scheme will commonly have three levels. If more able learners are to score five or six marks, they need to be meeting the level 3 descriptor as often as possible.
Help learners prepare by modelling extended responses and providing opportunities to practise this – considering a structure, selecting key words, using connectives and checking against the exam specifications.
3. Use of higher-order maths skills
Learners need to be able to apply maths skills in a variety of ways. This could be a multistep response in which learners, for example, plot points on a graph, sketch the (curved) line of best fit, draw the tangent and calculate its gradient. This requires both the necessary command of these skills, and the understanding of which to use.
To ensure learners have access to the necessary maths skills, develop dialogue with your maths department. Invite colleagues to jointly consider the maths skills involved in sample science questions, and how best to prepare learners for these challenges. As well as nurturing specific skills, focus on developing learners’ ability to identify effective strategies and sequencing.
4. Linking ideas from different areas
As part of the changes to GCSE science specifications, learners are expected to show they can work and think flexibly, linking ideas from different areas of the subject. Help them prepare by providing regular opportunities to practise this. Check out the specification and the guidance it gives about key ideas and linkage.
5. Applying ideas to novel contexts
Telling learners “If it’s not on the spec you don’t need to learn it” is dangerous – and untrue! Challenging them to apply their understanding to other contexts is part of the function of the exams and will continue to be so. Again, help them prepare through regular practise so they become accustomed to applying concepts to new contexts.
6. Varied command words
Each awarding organisation uses a particular set of command words in GCSE science exams. Some of these will already be in common parlance in your science lessons, others less so. Familiarising learners with the full range of these terms will prepare them to answer a wider range of questions.
For example, a trawl through a selection of stretch and challenge questions from one suite of exam papers indicated the following usage: explain (x7), suggest (x6), compare, calculate (x12), give (x6), estimate, justify (x2), describe (x5), write (x2), use (x9), work out, draw, predict, complete (x3), show (x2), state.
Note that while these numbers show the frequency of each stem in one random selection, they don’t reflect the numbers of marks associated. It is useful, however, to reflect on the extent to which these form part of the discourse in science lessons – not just featuring in practice exam questions, but in all written and oral activities.
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Posted By Edmund Walsh,
22 January 2019
Updated: 22 December 2020
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In this excerpt from the NACE Essentials guide “Realising the potential of more able learners in GCSE science”, NACE Associate Ed Walsh outlines six key steps to improve provision and outcomes for those capable of attaining the highest grades in this subject.
1. Make effective use of assessment data
While many schools devote a significant amount of time to assembling, applying, marking and grading periodic tests, there’s often scope for these to be used more effectively to diagnose areas for improvement. Question-level analysis can help both teachers and learners identify areas of low subject knowledge and skills gaps (tagged against GCSE assessment objectives) – informing feedback, self-assessment and goal-setting, interventions, evaluation of teaching styles and planning for future lessons.
Similarly, analysis can indicate how learners perform in multiple choice questions, shorter written responses and longer responses. Be prepared: if aspirational students are looking to develop in one of these areas, they’ll expect guidance as to how to do so. Woe betide the teacher who can’t provide a learner chasing a good grade either with more examples or effective strategies in areas identified as weaknesses!
2. Challenge learners to use a range of command words
Each awarding organisation uses a particular set of command words in GCSE science exams. Some of these will already be in common parlance in your science lessons, while others may not be used as often. Familiarising learners with the full range of these terms will prepare them to answer a wider range of questions.
When revising a topic, prompt learners to suggest the type of questions examiners might ask; this will help them revise more effectively. Elicit the nature of each question, encouraging learners to consider the influence of assessment objectives (AOs) and to use a full range of command words.
3. Develop dialogue with the maths department
The quality of dialogue with colleagues in maths and the development of a whole-school numeracy policy has never been so important. (It may also never have been so tricky, bearing in mind the pressure that both maths and science teams can be under.) It can be tempting for a hard-pressed science department to want the maths team to fit in with their running order of topics. The maths curriculum is also driven by a sense of progression, but not necessarily the same one. Skills demanded in KS3 science may in some cases not be taught in maths until KS4.
Rather than reach an impasse, focus on exploring common ground. Set up a joint meeting and look at maths skills involved in sample science questions. Invite colleagues to explore potential strategies, terminology, likely challenges for learners and how they would deal with these. As well as nurturing specific skills, focus on developing learners’ ability to identify effective strategies and sequencing. More able learners aiming for high grades need to develop problem-solving skills as well as a mastery of individual skills.
4. Review the role of practical work and skills
When carrying out required practicals, ensure learners have access to a range of question types, including questions based on AO2 (application of knowledge and understanding) and AO3 (interpretation and evaluation). It is also important to look at the lists of apparatus and techniques skills in the GCSE specification. Questions relating to practical work are often based on these, even if the context isn’t one learners have met in the required practicals. Assess how good learners are at these skills and whether you can give them more opportunities to develop these. These have a strong relationship with skills used at A-level, meaning those progressing to further study will also benefit.
5. Develop the role of extended writing
Candidates will be expected to develop extended responses, especially on higher tier papers. Look at learners’ performance on such questions to see how it compares with other items. It may be useful to encourage learners to consider what structure to use before commencing writing. Model the drafting of an extended response, demonstrating how you select key words, use connectives, structure a response and check against the answer. AQA, for example, is moving towards the use of generic descriptors for types of extended responses.
6. Link ideas from different parts of the specification
As part of the changes to GCSE science specifications, learners are expected to show that they can work and think flexibly, linking ideas from different areas. Use questions that require this, identifying good examples to use in advance. One of the sample questions uses the context of a current balance, including ideas about magnetic fields and levers. Check out the specification and the guidance it gives about key ideas and linkage. As well as scrutinising the detailed content, look at the preamble and follow-up.
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Posted By Edmund Walsh,
03 December 2018
Updated: 22 December 2020
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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.
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