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.
Covid-19 has presented schools with unprecedented challenges. Pupils, parents and teachers have all been affected, and the wider implications in schools are far from over. From May 2020, over 1.2 billion learners worldwide have experienced school closures due to Covid-19, which corresponds to 73.8% of enrolled learners (Muller & Goldenberg, 2021). The pandemic continues to have a significant effect in all phases of our education system. This blog post captures some key messages from research into the effects of Covid-19 over the past two years and highlights the effects it has had on young people – particularly on the development of language and communication skills.
1. The pandemic negatively affected achievement. Vulnerable pupils and those from economically deprived backgrounds were most affected.
When pupils do not attend school (whilst acknowledging that much great work is done at home), the disruption has a negative impact on their academic achievement (Sims, 2020).
The disrupted periods of partial school closures in England took a toll academically. DfE research (Pupils' progress in the 2020 to 2022 academic years) showed that in summer 2021, pupils were still behind in their learning compared to where they would otherwise have been in a typical year. Primary school pupils were one month behind in reading and around three months behind in maths. Data for secondary pupils suggest they were behind in their reading by around two months.
Primary pupils eligible for free school meals were on average an additional half month further behind in reading and maths compared to their more advantaged peers. Research has highlighted that the attainment gap between disadvantaged children and others is now 18 months by the end of Key Stage 4. Vulnerable pupils with education, health and care (EHC) plans scored 3.62 grades below their peers in 2020 and late-arriving pupils with English as an additional language (EAL) were 1.64 grades behind those with English as a first language (Hunt et al., 2022).
2. Remote teaching during Covid changed the nature of learning – including reduced learning time and interactions – further widening existing gaps.
‘Learning time’ is the amount of time during which pupils are actively working or engaged in learning, which in turn is connected to academic achievement. Pre-pandemic (remember those days?!), the average mainstream school day in England for primary and secondary settings was around six hours 30 minutes a day. The difference between primary and secondary is minimal and averages out at 9 minutes a day.
During the period up to April 2021, mainstream pupils in England lost around one third of learning time (Elliot Major et al., 2021). We know that disadvantaged pupils continue to be disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Levels of lost learning remain higher for pupils in more deprived areas.
School provision for online learning changed radically since the beginning of the first lockdown. Almost all pupils received some remote learning tasks from their teachers. Just over half of all pupils taught remotely did not usually have any online lessons, defined as live or real-time lessons. Offline provision, such as worksheets or recorded video, was much more common than live online lessons, but inevitably reduced the opportunities for pupil-pupil interactions.
Parents reported that for most pupils, time spent on schoolwork fell short of the expected school day (Eivers et al., 2020). Pupil participation was, on average, poorer amongst those from lower income families and those whose parents had lower levels of education (Eivers et al., 2020). Families from higher socio-economic backgrounds spend more financially to support their children’s online remote learning. At times, technological barriers, as well as significant differences in the amount of support pupils received for learning at home, resulted in a highly unequal experience of learning during this time.
3. There has been a negative impact on pupils’ wellbeing, socio-emotional development and ability to learn.
A YoungMinds report in 2020 reinforced the effect of the pandemic on pupils’ mental health. In a UK survey of participants aged up to 25 years with a history of mental illness, 83% of respondents felt that school closures had made their mental illness worse. 26% said they were unable to access necessary support.
Schools play a key role in supporting children who have experienced bereavement or trauma, and socio-emotional interventions delivered by school staff can be very effective. Children with emotional and behavioural disorders also have significant difficulties with speaking and understanding, which often goes unidentified (Hollo et.al., 2014).
The experience of lockdown and being at home is a stressful situation for some children, as is returning to school for some children. While some studies found that children are not affected two to four years later, other studies suggest that there are lasting effects on socio-emotional development (Muller & Goldenberg, 2021).
Stress also challenges cognitive skills, in turn affecting the ability to learn. Trauma, emotional and social isolation, all well-known during the lockdown, are still too frequent. The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain which is responsible for higher-order thinking and decision-making, is the brain region most affected by stress. Stress-related impairments to the prefrontal cortex display impaired memory retrieval (Vogel & Schwabe, 2016) and difficulties with executive skills such as planning, problem solving and monitoring errors (Gibbs et al., 2019).
4. National restrictions have curtailed the pandemic but had an adverse effect on communication and language.
Covid-19 and the associated lockdowns have had a huge impact on children’s speaking and listening skills. We are only beginning to understand the scale of this. Preventative measures such as the wearing of face masks in school, social distancing and virtual lessons, all designed to address contagion concerns, have negatively impacted on communication in all the school phases.
Face masks cover the lower part of the face, impacting on communication by changing sound transmission. They remove visible cues from the mouth and lips used for speech-reading and limit visibility of facial expressions (Saunders, 2020). Speech perception involves audio-visual integration of information, which is diminished by wearing masks because articulatory gestures are obscured. Children with hearing loss are more dependent on lip-reading; loss of this visual cue exacerbates the distortion and attenuation effects of masks.
Social interaction is also essential for language development. Social distancing restrictions on large group gatherings in school have affected children’s deeper interactions with peers. “Peer talk” is an essential component of pragmatic language development and includes conversational skills such as turn taking and understanding the implied meaning behind a speaker’s words, and these have also been reduced (Charney, 2021).
How bad is the issue? A report from the children’s communication charity I CAN estimates that more than 1.5 million UK children and young people risk being left behind in their language development as a direct result of lost learning in the Covid-19 period. Speaking Up for the Covid Generation (I CAN, 2021) reported that the majority of teachers are worried about young people being able to catch up with their speaking and understanding. Amongst its findings were that:
62% of primary teachers surveyed were worried that pupils will not meet age-related expectations
60% of secondary teachers surveyed were worried that pupils will not meet age-related expectations
63% of primary and secondary teachers surveyed believe that children who are moving to secondary school will struggle more with their speaking and understanding, in comparison to those who started secondary school before the Coronavirus pandemic.
Measures taken to combat the pandemic have deprived children of vital social contact and experiences essential for developing language. Reduced contact with grandparents, social distancing and limited play opportunities mean children have been less exposed to conversations and everyday experiences. Oracy skills have been impacted by the wearing of face coverings, fewer conversations with peers and adults, hearing fewer words and remote learning where verbal interactions are significantly reduced.
Teachers are now seeing the impact of this in their classrooms. The I CAN report findings show that the majority of teachers are worried about the effect that the pandemic has had on young people’s speech and language. As schools across the UK start on their roads to recovery and building their curricula anew, this evidence reveals the major impact the pandemic has had on children’s speaking and understanding ability. The final Covid-19-related restrictions in England have now been removed, but for many young people and families, this turning point does not mark a return to life as it was before the pandemic. There is much to do now to prioritise communication.
Join the conversation…
As schools move on from the pandemic and seek to address current challenges, close gaps, and take oracy education to the next level, NACE is focusing on research into the role of oracy within cognitively challenging learning. This term’s free member meetup will bring together NACE members from all phases and diverse contexts to explore what it means to put oracy at the heart of a cognitively challenging curriculum – read more here.
Charney, S.A., Camarata, S.M. & Chern, A. (2021). Potential Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Communication and Language Skills in Children. Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery 2, Vol. 165(1) pp. 1-2.
Elliot Major, L., Eyles, A. & Machin, S. (2021). Learning Loss Since Lockdown: Variation Across the Home Nations [online]. Available at: https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/cepcovid-19-023.pdf
Eivers, E., Worth, J. & Ghosh, A. (2020). Home learning during Covid-19: findings from the Understanding Society longitudinal study. Slough: NFER.
Gibbs L., Nursey, J., Cook J. et al. (2019). Delayed disaster impacts on academic performance of primary school children. Child Development 90(4): pp. 1402-1412.
Hollo, A., Wehby, J. H., & Oliver, R. M. (2014). Unidentified language deficits in children with emotional and behavioural disorders: a meta-analysis. Exceptional Children 80 (2), pp.169-186.
Hunt, E. et al. (2022) COVID-19 and Disadvantage. Gaps in England 2020. London: Education Policy Institute. Nuffield Foundation.
I CAN (2021) Speaking Up for the Covid Generation. London: I CAN.
Muller, L-M. & Goldenberg, G. (2021) Education in times of crisis: The potential implications of school closures for teachers and students. A review of research evidence on school closures and international approaches to education during the COVID-19 pandemic. London: Chartered College of Teaching.
Saunders, G.H., Jackson, I.R. & Visram, A.S. (2020): Impacts of face coverings on communication: an indirect impact of COVID-19. International Journal of Audiology, DOI: 10.1080/14992027.2020.1851401
Sims, S. (2020) Briefing Note: School Absences and Pupil Achievement. UCL. Available at: https://repec-cepeo.ucl.ac.uk/cepeob/cepeobn1.pdf
Vogel, S. & Schwabe, L. (2016) Learning and memory under stress: implications for the classroom. Science of Learning 1(1): pp.1-10.
YoungMinds (2020) Coronavirus: Impact on young people with mental health needs. Available at: https://youngminds.org.uk/media/3708/coronavirus-report_march2020.pdf
Dr Kirstin Mulholland, Content Specialist for Mathematics at the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), shares a metacognitive strategy she’s found particularly helpful in supporting – and challenging – the thinking of higher-attaining pupils: “the debrief”.
Why is metacognition important?
Research tells us that metacognition and self-regulated learning have the potential to significantly benefit pupils’ academic outcomes. The updated EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit has compiled well over 200 school-based studies that reveal a positive average impact of around seven months progress. But it also recognises that "it can be difficult to realise this impact in practice as such methods require pupils to take greater responsibility for their learning and develop their understanding of what is required to succeed” .
Approaches to metacognition are often designed to give pupils a repertoire of strategies to choose from, and the skills to select the most suitable strategy for a given learning task. For high prior attaining pupils, this offers constructive and creative opportunities to further develop their knowledge and skills.
How can we develop metacognition in the classroom?
In my own classroom, a metacognitive strategy which I’ve found particularly helpful in supporting – and, crucially, challenging – the thinking of higher-attaining pupils is “the debrief”. The debrief as an effective learning strategy links to Recommendation 1 of the EEF’s Metacognition and Self-regulated Learning Guidance Report (2018), which highlights the importance of encouraging pupils to plan, monitor and evaluate their learning.
In a debrief, the role of the teacher is to support pupils to engage in “structured reflection”, using questioning to prompt learners to articulate their thinking, and to explicitly identify and evaluate the approaches used. These questions support and encourage pupils to reflect on the success of the strategies they used, consider how these could be used more effectively, and to identify other scenarios in which these could be useful.
Why does this matter for higher-attaining pupils?
When working in my own primary classroom, I found that encouraging higher-attaining pupils to explicitly consider their learning strategies in this way provides an additional challenge. Initially, many of the pupils I’ve worked with have been reluctant to slow down to consider the strategies they’ve used or “how they know”. Some have been overly focused on speed or always “getting things right” as an indication of success in learning.
When I first introduced the debrief into my own classroom, common responses from higher-attaining pupils were “I just knew” or “It was in my head”. However, what I also experienced was that, for some of these pupils, because they were used to quickly grasping new concepts as they were introduced, they didn’t always develop the strategies they needed for when learning was more challenging. This meant that, when faced with a task where they didn’t “just know”, some children lacked resilience or the strategies they needed to break into a problem and identify the steps needed to work through this.
As I incorporated the debrief more and more frequently into my lessons, I saw a significant shift. Through my questioning, I prompted children to reflect on the rationale underpinning the strategies they used. They were also able to hear the explanations given by others, developing their understanding of the range of options available to them. This helped to broaden their repertoire of knowledge and skills about how to be an effective learner.
How does the debrief work in practice?
Many of the questions we can use during the debrief prompt learners to reflect on the “what” and the “why” of the strategies they employed during a given task. For example,
What exactly did you do? Why?
What worked well? Why?
What was challenging? Why?
Is there a better way to…?
What changes would you make to…? Why?
However, I also love asking pupils much more open questions such as “What have you learned about yourself and your learning?” The responses of the learners I work with have often astounded me! They have encompassed not just their understanding of the specific learning objectives identified for a given lesson, but also demonstrating pupils’ ability to make links across subjects and to prior learning. This has led to wider reflections about their metacognition – strengths or weaknesses specific to them, the tasks they encountered, or the strategies they had used – or their ability to effectively collaborate with others.
For me, the debrief provides an opportunity for pupils’ learning to really take flight. This is where reflections about learning move beyond the boundaries and limitations of a single lesson, and instead empower learners to consider the implications of this for their future learning.
For our higher-attaining pupils, this means enabling them to take increasing ownership over their learning, including how to do this ever more effectively. This independence and control is a vital step in becoming resilient, motivated and autonomous learners, which sets them up for even greater success in the future.
Dr Ems Lord, Director of the University of Cambridge’s NRICH initiative, shares three activities to try in your classroom, to help learners improve their use of mathematical vocabulary.
Like many academic subjects, mathematics has developed its own language. Sometimes this can lead to humorous clashes when mathematicians meet the real world. After all, when we’re calculating the “mean”, we’re not usually referring to a measurement of perceived nastiness (unless it’s the person who devised the problem we’re trying to solve!).
Precision in our use of language within mathematics does matter, even among school-aged learners. In my experience, issues frequently arise in geometry sessions when working with pyramids and prisms, squares and rectangles, and cones and cylinders. You probably have your own examples too, both within geometry and the wider curriculum.
In this blog post, I’ll explore three tried-and-tested ways to improve the use of mathematical vocabulary in the classroom.
1. Introduce your class to Whisper Maths
“Prisms are for naughty people, and pyramids are for dead people.” Even though I’ve heard that playground “definition” of prisms and pyramids many times before, it never fails to make me smile. It’s clear that the meanings of both terms cause considerable confusion in KS2 and KS3 classrooms. Don’t forget, learners often encounter both prisms and pyramids at around the same time in their schooling, and the two words do look very similar.
One useful strategy I’ve found is using an approach I like to refer to as Whisper Maths; it’s an approach which allows individuals time to think about a problem before discussing it in pairs, and then with the wider group. For Whisper Maths sessions focusing on definitions, I tend to initially restrict learner access to resources, apart from a large sheet of shared paper on their desks; this allows them to sketch their ideas and their drawings can support their discussions with others.
This approach helps me to better understand their current thinking about “prismness” and “pyramidness” before moving on to address any misconceptions. Often, I’ve found that learners tend to base their arguments on their knowledge of square-based pyramids which they’ve encountered elsewhere in history lessons and on TV. A visit to a well-stocked 3D shapes cupboard will enable them to explore a wider range of examples of pyramids and support them to refine their initial definition.
I do enjoy it when they become more curious about pyramids, and begin to wonder how many sides a pyramid might have, because this conversation can then segue nicely into the wonderful world of cones!
2. Explore some family trees
Let’s move on to think about the “Is a square a rectangle?” debate. I’ve come across this question many times, and similarly worded ones too.
As someone who comes from a family which talks about “oblongs”, I only came across the “Is a square a rectangle?” debate when I became a teacher trainer. For me, using the term oblong meant that my understanding of what it means to be a square or an oblong was clear; at primary school I thought about oblongs as “stretched” squares. This early understanding made it fairly easy for me to see both squares and oblongs (or non-squares!) as both falling within the wider family of rectangles. Clearly this is not the case for everyone, so having a strategy to handle the confusion can be helpful.
Although getting out the 2D shape box can help here, I prefer to sketch the “family tree” of rectangles, squares and oblongs. As with all family trees, it can lead to some interesting questions when learners begin to populate it with other members of the family, such the relationship between rectangles and parallelograms.
3. Challenge the dictionary!
When my classes have arrived at a definition, it’s time to pull out the dictionaries and play “Class V dictionary”. To win points, class members need to match their key vocabulary to the wording in the dictionary. For the “squares and rectangles” debate, I might ask them to complete the sentence “A rectangle has...”. Suppose they write “four sides and four right angles”, we would remove any non-mathematical words, so it now reads “four sides, four right angles.” Then we compare their definition with the mathematics dictionary.
They win 10 points for each identical word or phrase, so “four right angles, four sides” would earn them 20 points. It’s great fun, and well worth trying out if you feel your classes might be using their mathematical language a little less imprecisely than you would like.
More free maths activities and resources from NRICH…
A collaborative initiative run by the Faculties of Mathematics and Education at the University of Cambridge, NRICH provides thousands of free online mathematics resources for ages 3 to 18, covering early years, primary, secondary and post-16 education – completely free and available to all.
Based on a post originally published on Jemma Sherwood’s website, The World Is Maths.
Back in 2017 (where does time go?) I wrote this post on the importance of vocabulary, where I argued for including subject-specific (what we tend to refer to as ‘tier 3’) vocab more in our lessons.
Since then I’ve obviously thought more about this and, following on from conversations with David Didau, I wanted to get down another observation.
In my experience, maths teachers can have a tendency to underestimate two things:
The vocabulary our pupils can cope with.
The effect of bypassing the correct vocab.
Let me elaborate.
The vocabulary our pupils can cope with
Our pupils are capable of learning lots of words. They learnt to speak as youngsters and acquired thousands of them, but we know that many of them don’t move past the basic or intermediate literacy skills to those they need to access more advanced material (Shanahan and Shanahan, 2008). Something happens to many students at secondary age whereby their language acquisition falters. If that is the case, then it falls to us to accept that we’re not teaching them this as well as we could. We must maintain the highest of expectations of all our pupils and part of that is building language acquisition into our lessons such that it is both integral and normal.
What do integral and normal look like? Integral means you value language acquisition as an essential part of your teaching, that you understand its necessity in an education. You seize every opportunity to teach new words, you make pupils practice them – saying them out loud, using them in sentences in context – and you carefully build this into what you do. Normal means language acquisition teaching isn’t an add-on and it’s not over-complicated. We don’t need fancy worksheets and analysis of etymology (although etymology is fascinating and all students should meet it). If we make the teaching of language (or anything, for that matter) too onerous or time-consuming it won’t happen properly. It must be a simple, everyday occurrence, as normal as anything else we do.
When the teaching of language is integral and normal you see that pupils are able to learn really rather complex and specific vocabulary very well and this, in turn, allows them to think more precisely and to communicate more clearly.
Returning to the paper referenced earlier, the authors spent some time talking to mathematicians, scientists and historians to determine what reading looked like in each discipline. There were specific elements of reading that were valued to a different extent by each. The mathematicians valued close reading and re-reading, specifically because reading in mathematics is linked to precision, accuracy and proof. I particularly like this quote:
Students often attempt to read mathematics texts for the gist or general idea, but this kind of text cannot be appropriately understood without close reading. Math reading requires a precision of meaning and each word must be understood specifically in service to that particular meaning.
If we want to take our students on a pathway to being mathematical, thinking like a mathematician, we should build in language acquisition and precision reading as a principle of this.
The effect of bypassing the correct vocab
Something I see very regularly in classrooms is teachers avoiding using correct vocab, I think (from conversations I’ve had) because they are worried that particular vocab will make it harder to understand a concept. This is best explained with an example:
Teacher: A factor is a number that goes into another number.
How many times have you said this? I know I have! I think it happens because of a perception that a “simplified” definition makes this word accessible to more pupils. However, I would argue that we are making the word specifically less accessible in doing this.
What does ‘goes into’ really mean? As a novice without a strong mathematical background I could interpret this in a number of ways. However, if my teacher tells me, “A factor is a number that divides another number with no remainder”, or similar, and accompanies this with examples and non-examples, I can make more sense of the word from the start. Moreover, if my teacher regularly refers to the word ‘factor’ alongside this definition, and asks my peers and me this definition, and gets us hearing it and rehearsing it, then I start to associate the word ‘division’ with ‘factor’ and I am less likely to confuse it with ‘multiple’. Eventually, it will become part of my fluent vocabulary.
In ‘dumbing down’ a definition, we work against understanding rather than for it. That doesn’t mean we have to go all-out Wolfram Mathworld* on our pupils, but it does mean we have to consider the implications of our own use of language and how we can make small changes that have a positive impact. It’s worth taking some time with your team to discuss where else we have a tendency to bypass proper vocabulary or definitions, and think about the specific negative effects this will have on our pupils. How can you, as a team, work towards increasing your pupils’ language acquisition and precision? What ideas or concepts do you want them to automatically associate a certain word with? Design your instruction towards that aim.
*“A factor is a portion of a quantity, usually an integer or polynomial that, when multiplied by other factors, gives the entire quantity.” Mathworld
Jemma Sherwood is a Senior Lead Practitioner for Maths, and the author of How to Enhance Your Maths Subject Knowledge: Number and Algebra for Secondary Teachers. Find out more about Jemma on her website, or follow her on Twitter.
The opportunities that present themselves to teachers these days are truly amazing. Last summer the chance to write and deliver a Zoom-based programme of learning to primary-aged pupils in Beijing was presented to me. Yes, Beijing. How could I refuse the opportunity to apply an English teaching style to another culture? Through a partnership between NACE and a private educational provider I embarked upon a programme of 16 two-hour sessions over a period of eight weeks via Zoom, using Google Classroom for resources and homework. The lessons were taught from 7-9pm 9pm Beijing time. Would my teaching keep the nine-year olds awake on a Sunday night?
The context
The education company I worked with offers what it terms ‘gifted and talented programmes’ to all ages and across the curriculum. The pupils mainly attended international schools and had their school lessons taught in English. The programmes have previously been delivered in person during the summer holidays by overseas teachers, primarily from the US. A move to Zoom-based learning after the pandemic has proved successful and now lessons are offered throughout the year in the evening and at the weekend with parents paying highly for the courses. The company organised the programme very well with training and support for the teacher at every stage. It is an impressive operation.
I taught an English literature unit based upon a comparative novel study using ‘The Iron Man’ and ‘The Giant’s Necklace’ – texts familiar to many Key Stage 2 teachers. The pupils worked hard in lessons, listened well and thought deeply. They retained knowledge well and I used retrieval practice at the start of most lessons. They completed these tasks eagerly. They were a pleasure to teach. Off-task behaviour was rare, pupils laughed when jokes were made – though of course humour was lost in translation at times (or maybe my jokes were not funny).
What worked?
Central to the learning was the pupils reading aloud. They loved this. It gave me the chance to clarify meaning, check vocabulary and asks questions at depth. All pupils read, some with impressive fluency given it was their second language. Parents commented they were not used to working this way. I think in other courses they often read for homework and then in lessons answered questions at length and then wrote essays. Despite being young there is an emphasis on academic writing. One pupil referred to his story as an essay, revealing that writing a story was unusual for his studies. Writing the story was a highlight for the pupils, one I suspect they are not used to. The reading also allowed for targeted questions, which the parents seemed to like, having not seen the technique used before. Yes, parents often sat next to their child, out of my eyesight, to help if needed. Hearing them whisper what to say on occasion was a new one for me.
To get an idea of the dedication of the pupils and support of the parents, it is worth mentioning that one pupil joined the lesson while travelling home on a train from her holiday. With her mum sat next to her, she joined in the lesson as best she could and all with a smile on her face. Another pupil said her father had asked her how she was reviewing the learning from the previous lesson each week. Learning is valued. Technical difficulties were rare but when they arose the pupils were proactive in overcoming difficulties, moving rooms and logging on with another device. Resilience and self-regulation was noticeably high. The last lesson included a five-minute presentation from each pupil on what they had learned from the unit. Pupils prepared well, the standard was high and pupils showed depth of understanding of the themes covered.
Addressing the language gap
As a teacher the main challenge to emerge was the gap between the pupils’ understanding of complex literary concepts and the use of basic English. The units are aimed at what is termed ‘gifted and talented’ yet at times I needed to cover areas such as verb tenses at a basic level. In English assessment terms the students were at times working at Year 6 greater depth for reading and some aspects of their writing, but were only ‘working towards’ in other areas.
I have decades of experience teaching EAL learners, the majority of whom attained at or above national expectation at the end of Key Stage 2 despite early language challenges. Here the gap was even more pronounced. Should I focus on the higher-order thinking and ignore what was essentially a language issue? I decided not to do that since the students need to develop all aspects of their English to better express their ideas, including writing. I did mini-grammar lessons in context, worked primarily on verb tenses in their writing and when speaking, and prioritised Tier 2 vocabulary since Tier 3 specialist vocabulary was often strong. They knew what onomatopoeia was, but not what a plough was, let alone cultural references like a pasty. Why would they?
Motivations and barriers
At the start of each lesson, I welcomed each pupil personally and asked them, ‘What have you been doing today?’ Almost every answer referred to learning or classes. They had either completed other online lessons, swimming lessons, fencing lessons, piano practice (often two hours plus) or other planned activities. Rarely did a pupil say something like ‘I rode my bike’. Having a growth mindset was evident and the students understood this and displayed admirable resilience. Metacognition and self-regulation were also evident in learning.
However, one area where the pupil did struggle was in self-assessment. The US system is based on awarding marks and grades regularly, including for homework. I chose not to do this, thinking grades for homework would be somewhat arbitrarily awarded unless something like a 10-question model was used weekly. The research on feedback without grades suggests that it leads to greater pupil progress and this was my focus. It would be interesting to explore with the students whether my lack of grade awarding lowered their motivation because they were used to extrinsic rather than intrinsic motivation. Does this contradict my assertion that growth mindset was strong?
Another issue emerged linked to this – that of perfectionism. One pupil was keen to show her knowledge in lessons but was the only pupil who rarely submitted homework. A large part of the programme was to write a story based on ‘The Iron Man’, which this student did not seem to engage with. At the parents’ meeting the mother asked if she could write for her child if it was dictated, a suggestion I rejected saying the pupil needed to write so that I could provide feedback to improve. It became clear the child did not want to submit her work because it was ‘not as good as their reading’. The child had told me in the first lesson that they had been accelerated by a year at school. I fear problems are being stored up that my gentle challenges have only now begun to confront and that may take a long time to resolve. This was not the case for the other pupils, but the idea of pressure to work hard and succeed was always evident. I realise the word ‘pressure’ here is mine and may not be used by others in the same context, including the parents.
Parental support
So, what of parental engagement? The first session began with getting-to-know-each-other activities and a discussion on reading. After 20 minutes the TA messaged me to say the parent of one pupil felt the lesson was ‘too easy’. Nothing like live feedback! I messaged back that the aim at that point was to relax the children and build a teaching relationship. A few weeks later the same parent asked to speak to me at the end of the lesson. I was prepared for a challenge that did not materialise. She said her child liked the lessons and she loved the way I asked personalised questions to extend her child. She was not used to her being taught this way. I used a mixture of cold-calling, named lolly-sticks in a pot and targeted questions, which seemed novel and the children loved.
Parent meetings were held half-way through the unit and feedback about things like the questioning wasvery positive. The extremely upbeat response was surprising since the teaching seemed a little ‘flat’ to me given the limitations of Zoom but that is not how it was received. The pupils seemed to enjoy the variety of pace, the high level of personal attention, the range of tasks, the chunking of the learning and the sense of fun I tried to create. Parents asked when I was delivering a new course and wanted to know when I was teaching again.
Final reflections
So, what did I learn? Children are children the world over, which we all know deep down. But these children apply themselves totally to their work. They expect to work hard and enjoy ‘knowing’ things. Their days are filled with activity and learning. Zoom can work well but still the much-prized verbal feedback is not the same from 5,000 miles away.
And finally, as a teacher I have learned over the years to be professional and to keep teaching whatever happens. When a pupil said they didn’t finish their homework because they were traveling back home, I enquired where they had been. ‘Wuhan’ they replied. Without missing a beat, I further asked, ‘So what do you think about the plot in chapter two then?’
Would you be interested in sharing your experiences of teaching remotely and/or across cultures? Is this an area you’d like to explore or develop? Contact communications@nace.co.uk to share your experience or cpd@nace.co.uk to express your interest in being part of future projects like this.
NACE Research and Development Director Hilary Lowe explores the relationship between language and learning, and the development of language-rich learning environments as a key factor in cognitively challenging learning experiences.
“We use language to define our world, while at the same time the social world in which we live defines our language. The structure of language and the variation we find within it depend both on the social world as well as the ways in which we create an identity for ourselves and the ways in which we build relations with others. Understanding how language both constrains our thoughts and actions and how we use language to overcome those constraints are important lessons for all educators.” (Silver & Lewin, 2013)
We are sometimes so busy talking in classrooms that we forget about the centrality of language for learning. It is for this reason that this blog post focuses on what is arguably a neglected area in the training of teachers: an understanding of the primacy of language in the learning process, of the link between language and higher-level cognition and high achievement, and the critical role of teachers in developing high-level language skills at all stages of schooling.
The development of language and literacy has long been a tenet of the National Curriculum as well as a significant area of research. Research such as that from Oxford Children’s Language (Oxford, 2018; 2020) has continued to emphasise the importance of linguistic wealth, and the link between paucity of language and academic failure and diminished life chances.
The notion of ‘oracy’ has been less visible in policy developments but has received more recent attention through, for example, the survey undertaken by the Centre for Education and Youth and Oxford University (2021) and the Oracy APPG Speak for Change Inquiry report (April, 2021). The APPG inquiry found that the development of spoken language skills requires purposeful and intentional teaching and learning throughout children’s schooling. It also found that there is a concerning variation in the time and attention afforded to oracy across schools, meaning that for many children the opportunity to develop these skills is left to chance. The inquiry concluded that there is an indisputable case for oracy as an integral aspect of education. The conclusions also emphasised the primordial place of oracy for young people and the critical role of employers, teachers and Ofsted in trying to ensure that these skills are developed to a high level.
In the first phase of NACE’s research initiative Making Space for Able Learners, which focuses on cognitive challenging learning, we were delighted to find examples of effective practices in language development and use, which led us to a renewed interest in the significance of language and discourse in high achievement. The schools in the project which demonstrated consistently excellent practice and high achievement for their most able learners had a systematic and systemic approach to the development and use of high-level language skills alongside wider literacy and oracy development (see below for examples).
Some background: language, thinking and learning
The interaction between thought and language has long been the subject of research and academic debate. The thesis that natural language is involved in human thinking is universally well supported, although research into language and cognition often makes reference to ‘strong and weak theories’ of this thesis. Research suggests that higher-level language processes hold a pivotal role in higher-order executive and cognitive activities such as inference and comprehension, and indeed wider expressive communication skills.
Vygotsky (1978) writes that "[…] children solve practical tasks with the help of their speech, as well as their eyes and hands" (p. 26). In Vygotsky's view, speech is an extension of intelligence and thought, a way to interact with one's environment beyond physical limitations: “[…] the most significant moment in the course of intellectual development, which gives birth to the purely human forms of practical and abstract intelligence, occurs when speech and practical activity, two previously completely independent lines of development, converge.” (p. 24).
This higher level of development enables children to transcend the immediate, to test abstract actions before they are employed. This permits them to consider the consequences of actions before performing them. But most of all, language serves as a means of social interaction between people, allowing "the basis of a new and superior form of activity in children, distinguishing them from animals" (p. 28f). Vygotsky wrote, "human learning presupposes a specific social nature and a process by which children grow into the intellectual life of those around them" (p. 88). Language acts both as a vehicle for educational development and as an indispensable tool for understanding and knowledge acquisition.
In the classroom, therefore, we need to attend to the development of higher-level language processes as explicitly as we do to substantive subject skills and knowledge.
The functions of language in education
The various functions of language most pertinent in the classroom include:
Expression: ability to formulate ideas orally and in writing in a meaningful and grammatically correct manner.
Comprehension: ability to understand the meaning of words and ideas.
Vocabulary: lexical knowledge.
Naming: ability to name objects, people or events.
Fluency: ability to produce fast and effective linguistic content.
Discrimination: ability to recognize, distinguish and interpret language-related content.
Repetition: ability to produce the same sounds one hears.
Writing: ability to transform ideas into symbols, characters and images.
Reading: ability to interpret symbols, characters and images and transform them into speech.
(Lecours, 1998).
All of these functions are key components in the teaching and learning process. Teachers and students use spoken and written language to communicate with each other formally and informally. Students use language to comprehend, to question and interrogate, to present tasks and learning acquired – to display knowledge and skills. Teachers use language to explain, illustrate and model, to assess and evaluate learning. Both use language to develop relationships, knowledge of others and of self. But language is not just a medium for communication – it is intricately bound up with the nature of knowledge and thought itself.
What does this mean for cognitively challenging learning?
For the development of high levels of cognition and to achieve highly, pupils need to develop the language associated with higher-order thinking skills in all areas of the curriculum, such as hypothesising, evaluating, inferring, generalising, predicting or classifying (Gibbons, 1991).
In an educational context it is through iterations of linguistic interactions between teacher and student – and peer to peer – that the process of advancing in learning and knowledge occurs. As Hodge (1993) notes, with limited time in the classroom, teachers often spend much of the available time conveying information rather than ensuring comprehension. This reduces the opportunities for a range of linguistic interactions and for learners to acquire and practise the higher-level language skills associated with high achievement. Planning and organising teaching and learning therefore needs to allow for an increase in opportunities for rich language environments and interactions alongside a cognitively challenging curriculum.
In the NACE research project school visits, we witnessed numerous incidences of highly effective and consistent practices in classroom discourse which clearly contributed to the achievement of highly able learners. These included:
Teachers modelling advanced language and skilled explanation and questioning;
Pupils being taught the language of skills such as reasoning, synthesis, evaluation;
Frequent use of ‘dialogic’ frameworks and enquiry-based learning;
The use of disciplinary discourse and higher tiers of language;
Instructional models which include and prioritise the above.
Examples of effective, language-rich learning environments from the project include:
Portswood Primary School: focus on the early development of vocabulary, language and talk. Teachers use sophisticated language to communicate expectations and learning.
Alfreton Nursery School: teaching develops skills of concentration, as pupils focus on a central stimulus/object and formulate “big questions”. There is also an explicit focus on team working with reference to reasons “why we can agree to disagree” and the importance of listening. The teacher follows these pupil-led ideas in later sessions.
Glyncoed Primary School: a challenging curriculum is achieved through planning and delivery of problem solving-based activities, extended and cognitively demanding tasks, and pupil choice. Teacher talk and high-level and qualitatively differentiated questioning, rich dialogue and cognitive talk is in evidence. Excellent modelling and explanations are also pervasive.
Greenbank High School: pupils are stimulated by differentiated questions prompting them to test hypotheses, make predictions and transfer their knowledge to new contexts. As a result, pupils are working at a strong, sustained pace.
You can read more about the project and order copies of the report here.
Improving the quality and nature of linguistic interaction and discourse within the classroom can better equip learners to engage in cognitive challenge. Learners thus equipped can also move more effectively from guided practice to independence and self-regulation. Teachers working with more able pupils must have a clear pedagogical strategy in mind, with discourse and well-planned questioning an integral part of that strategy. By using a highly interactive pedagogical model, which is language-dependent, teachers get rapid feedback about how well knowledge schemas are forming and how fluent pupils have become in retrieving and using what they have learnt. Working with the most able learners, the quality of questioning and questioning routines must provide the teacher with diagnostic information and the pupils with increased challenge.
Creating language-rich schools and classrooms: implications for teacher development
The development of language is too important to be left to be ‘caught’ alongside the rest of the taught curriculum. We need to give it explicit attention across the curriculum, alongside subject knowledge and skills. To do this expertly teachers should have access to professional development opportunities which give them insights into substantive areas of language acquisition and development – including what that means at different ages and stages and for learners of different abilities and language experience.
NACE’s future CPD and resources will therefore focus on issues in and strategies for language development for high achievement, including:
Case studies of NACE evidence schools with excellent practice in language for high achievement;
The language needs and characteristics of different learners, including the most able;
Creating language-rich school environments;
Approaches to teaching and learning for language development;
EAL learners;
Developing a whole-school language policy.
Schools accredited with the NACE Challenge Award are invited to join our free termly Challenge Award Schools Network Group events (online) to share effective practice in this and other areas. View upcoming events here, or contact communications@nace.co.uk to learn more about NACE’s work in this field and/or to share your school’s experience.
In the opening weeks of this term, we held two online meetups for NACE members – focused on exploring challenges and opportunities in the current context, sharing ideas and experiences with peers, and identifying priorities and core principles for the coming weeks and months.
While acknowledging the significant differences in the experiences of both students and staff members over the past six months, the two sessions also highlighted some strong common themes and key messages:
1. Humanity first and teaching first
While wellbeing is and should remain a priority, NACE Associate Neil Jones makes the case that for more able learners, study is in fact an intrinsic part of their humanity. The meetups highlighted the need to focus on restoring learners’ confidence and self-belief; reinstating healthy and effective learning routines; showing care, calm and confidence in learners’ abilities and futures; continuing to consider the needs of the more able in planning and practice (and supporting colleagues to do so); maintaining high expectations and ambitions; and being aware of the risk of learning becoming “endless” for the more able (particularly in remote/independent learning).
2. Assess, but don’t add stress
While meetup attendees agreed on the importance of understanding where students are and identifying gaps in learning, they also emphasised the importance of achieving this without creating additional pressure, either for staff or learners. Take time over this, building in low-/no-stakes assessment, regular verbal feedback, and involving students in the process of identifying where they feel more/less confident and what they need to do next.
3. Stay ambitious in teaching and learning
A recurrent message from the meetups was the importance of remaining ambitious in teaching and learning – balancing the need to pare back/streamline without narrowing the curriculum or lowering expectations, and auditing deficits without leaping to remedial/deficit thinking. Key ideas shared included a focus on meaningful tasks; teaching to where learners could be now; choosing language carefully to inspire, excite and set high expectations; finding ways to incorporate hands-on as well as theoretical learning; finding opportunities for collaboration; and prioritising dialogic teaching and learning – recognising the loss of rich language exchange during school closures.
4.Continue to build on “lessons from lockdown”
Both sessions also highlighted the many innovative practices developed during school closures, many of which will be retained and further developed. Examples included the use of technology and/or project-based learning to support learners in working both independently and in collaboration with one another.
Finally, the meetups reinforced the importance of engaging and listening to students – involving them in conversations about their experience, interests and passions, and making them part of the creative, innovative thinking and discussion that will help schools and individuals continue to move forward positively. Or as NACE Associate Dr Keith Watson has written, “Not merely recovering, but rebounding and reigniting with energy, vigour and a celebration of talents.”
For more on these key messages and other ideas explored during the meetups, watch the recordings:
NACE member meetups are free to attend for all NACE members, offering opportunities to connect and share ideas with peers across the UK and beyond, as well as hearing from NACE Associates and leading schools.
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. 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. Find out more.
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
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!
Posted By Tracy Goodyear,
05 November 2018
Updated: 22 December 2020
Ahead of her workshop “Challenging more able learners in English (KS3-4)”, NACE Associate Tracy Goodyear shares three steps to review and improve the quality of challenge provided in your KS3 English lessons…
Shortly before the half term break, I asked a number of Year 13 students if they could remember the moment that solidified their decision to study English at A-level. The responses were interesting: some of them said it was a particular teacher whose passion for their subject had inspired a love of literature; some said it was one particular lesson that had given them that all-important lightbulb moment.
One student recollected an individual lesson that she recalled quite vividly: “It was Year 9 Shakespeare, Miss – we were debating who decides literary value.”
This was the response that interested me most. I asked what she valued about that experience and she said that it felt like she had really been forced to think for herself – that she felt unsure at first, but soon found the confidence and the words to argue her point of view on a topic she hadn’t really given much thought to in the past.
This conversation was another reminder for me about the importance of the Key Stage 3 diet. It reminded me that KS3 is indeed what some on EduTwitter are dubbing “The Wonder Years” and that key decisions and attitudes towards subjects are decided during this crucial time. It is, therefore, pivotal that the KS3 curriculum is a balanced one – providing a rich and diverse set of experiences that nurture a love for learning and a love for literature.
Here are three strategies to step up the challenge in KS3 English:
1. Start by defining the “end product”
Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool have both conducted extensive research on what defines success and what makes the world’s most successful people achieve extraordinary things. In their book Peak[1] the authors discuss the “virtuous circle” in which “honing the skill improves mental representation, and mental representation helps hone the skill”.
This got me thinking about the mental representations teachers have of learners. Are we always clear about where we want our students to “be” at certain times in their school career, beyond reaching centrally determined target grades? Do we always hold a clear vision of what “success” looks like for an individual learner/group of learners?
Over the past year, my department has spent quite a lot of time defining a vision for our KS3 “end product”. We met as a team to list attributes we wanted for our learners by the end of the key stage – an opportunity to vent about things they “couldn’t do” and skills they appeared to lack when it came to the start of GCSE. This discussion was about much more than examination criteria or working towards assessment objectives; our ideas about “progress” needed to delve much deeper. We wanted to be clear on the attributes we wanted learners to craft and hone, and we used this information to identify learning opportunities we would habitually offer to ensure success.
After some discussion, we decided that our aim for KS3 is to cultivate students who:
Have a critical eye, so they do not blindly accept things;
Openly welcome feedback, criticism and differing views and interpretations and do not feel threatened by these;
Are skilled in planning, showing evidence of deep thinking;
Will take risks, knowing that the learning they will experience is more valuable than the fear of failure;
Actively listen to and reason with the ideas and expertise of others;
Construct meaningful arguments, supporting their ideas with confidence and conviction.
This activity gave us clarity in terms of what we wanted to achieve at KS3 and we were able to action these recommendations when designing a new programme of study. This was well-spent development time – I thoroughly recommend taking the time to define the characteristics you value in your own department, for both your teachers and your learners.
2. Encourage oracy and debate
I have always been an advocate for the “if you can say it, you can write it” mantra, but in English this is crucial. It’s important to create an environment where talk is both celebrated and expected – and there are several ways to encourage this in lessons and schemes of learning. Some of the best thinking that happens in English occurs when learners have had the opportunity to work with an idea, noticing its flaws/pitfalls and appreciating its various facets. Only then will they be able to show a profound depth of understanding.
Here are some ways in which oracy can be promoted in the KS3 English classroom:
Make thinking visible in your lessons[2] (in the words of Dylan Wiliam, play “basketball”, not “ping pong”[3]). There’s real power in passing an idea around the room; this avoids learners needing to seek your approval of an answer and models thinking “live” in the lesson.
Model high-level talk: explicitly teach vocabulary and make its various contexts clear. This can be achieved through “word of the week” displays or simply taking some time to discuss vocabulary choices in certain texts.
Don’t accept mediocre verbal responses – keep expectations high. Give learners time to formulate a strong verbal response. This may include a “think, pair, share” visible thinking routine, or developing purposeful “think time” after a question has been posed.
3. Engage with academic research
One of the most exciting challenges in teaching more able learners is knowing that you have to be several steps ahead in terms of your own knowledge and understanding – I have always enjoyed the intellectual thrill of this. As well as staying up to speed yourself, engaging with research and academic publications is also a great way to show learners the wider relevance of the programme of study and ensure that it also models high-level thinking and reasoning.
Find academic works/essays that provide alternative views of your topic and work with these as extracts. These could then be useful sources for further investigation and debate. Students will go on to approach their set texts through a different lens. (Recently I experimented with an essay on madness and insanity in Victorian England, and we used this to help gather information for a debate on Dickens’ presentation of Miss Havisham.)
Make time in department meetings to discuss new learning. Could members of the department take the lead on a certain aspect and be tasked to share updates at team meetings? An expert on 19th century literature perhaps? Or Shakespearean tragedies?
Encourage learners to engage independently with available materials. For example, there are some excellent resources on The British Library website with scans of original sources, which are invaluable. Last year we introduced an extension activity called “Universally Challenged”, where learners were tasked to research a related topic and to produce a small resource/elevator pitch for others in the group. The activity aims to broaden students’ literary understanding and strengthen their ability to make pertinent links between what they are studying and the contexts within which other texts were produced.
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