Photo by @ArmandKhoury via @unsplash
To what extent is the curriculum truly ambitious for all our pupils, regardless of their starting points?
Every young person is entitled to a rich, demanding curriculum and it’s my job as an educator to help them to get into the deep, interesting material.
There can be a tendency to make things too easy for too many of our pupils, in the mistaken belief that they can’t cope.
They can.
Here’s a few examples:
Working in a school before lockdown, I was talking to a group of year 9 pupils who’d been identified as high prior attaining but underachieving. Able, but idle.
When I asked them whether there was any subject where they weren’t messing around (because they weren’t learning but they were also stopping others from learning) they said that they always worked hard in geography.
‘Our teacher gives us really difficult things to do and to discuss. For instance, for homework she sometimes gives us articles to read from geographical publications. She says to us, ‘Your job for homework is to read this. Now, you’re not going to understand it all, but that’s ok because at the start of the next lesson we’re going to talk about what you did understand and what you didn’t.’
These students relished being given this kind of challenge. And when I was in their lesson later that day, the teacher had the same high expectations for all the students in the mixed attainment class, regardless of their starting points.
When I checked the results for geography in that school, they were the highest by a margin. Similarly, nationally. Now, that teacher didn’t give pupils difficult, demanding work above their pay grade in order to get great results. The results followed from the pupils being given this difficult work.
An example from primary: In ‘Assessment for Learning without Limits’,1 Alison Peacock and a colleague interviewed some pupils as they were going from year 5 into year 6.
They wanted to find out what they thought about ability tables. However, their responses were about the level of work they were given:
‘The more able loved it, they enjoyed being the ‘bright’ ones and having special challenges set by the teacher.
The middle group were annoyed they didn’t get the same work that the top group had, but they knew they would never be moved up as there were only six seats on the top table.
The ‘less able’ were affected the most. They liked the sound of some of the challenges the top group had, but they knew they would never get the chance.’
However, if we are going to do this, we need to create the conditions for ‘high challenge and low threat’.
In the next newsletter I’ll share some examples of what this looks like in the classroom.
Until next time
Mary
And when you’re ready, you might find these helpful for curriculum development in your school
Primary Subject Networks, live and recorded. This week we had Religious Education and Modern Languages up next
Huh Curriculum Leaders Course – September-October cohort: NOW FULL
Next cohort January - February 2023
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0335261361/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_Q4SVSEW6XW9RJY53FM2P