Why don't High Ability Students Make Progress & What Can You Do About It?

Anyone who has been teaching a long time will tell you that the main thing that used to matter was that every student gets at least a grade C in your subject.  The main reason behind this was for years the progress measures was only interested in students getting five Cs or above, and then more recently getting five Cs or above including Maths & English.  Whilst in real terms out in the real world anything below a C is often seen as a failure so getting a C was important, did these two factors really encourage us to push the higher end as much as we could?  I think, myself included, that our answer would have to be no! 

So, in more recent years, the progress measures have now been changed to actually look at student progress rather than just that final grade.  I’m sure that they’ll be those who’d lynch me for suggesting this, but I honestly think that in terms of pushing students to make the greatest amount of progress they can, measuring an end grade against a start point has been a good thing.  The biggest issue that this has caused however, is that it’s a lot more difficult for a higher ability student to physically make as much progress in terms of levels achieved.  This is one of the main factors behind the much greater focus on higher ability students as well as those students on the C-D boarder line.

Higher ability students are defined as a student who performs at, or shows the potential for performing at, an outstanding level of accomplishment in at least one domain, Maths, English or the Sciences, when compared to other students of the same age, experience, or environment and is characterized by exceptional gifts, talents, motivations or interests.  High ability students need to have educational experiences which help them meet their full potential.  So what does this actually mean?  I think it actually means that a student who is better equipped to make outstanding progress than others.  Basically it boils down to a few simple facts:

1. The student has a high reading age so is able to access high level content
2. Has an ability to understand mathematical problems
3. Is self-motivated so has pushed themselves during Primary school

The problem facing us now is, how can we ensure these students who enter secondary school with a high level of achievement maintain that level throughout, and achieve the high-level exam results which they should be capable of.  I quiet often find myself thinking about this question and maybe the start point should be to try and come up with some of the potential reasons that these high ability students aren’t making the progress they are capable of.

The annual dip in progress at the start of Year 7.  When students are in Year 6 they are a big fish in a small pond, so it may come as a culture shock when they start secondary school that they are now the youngest students.  Just to compound problems, the data that comes up from Primary school is often not with the secondary school for one reason or another at the start of the year.  This can lead to HA students not being put in the correct set which may cause them to become disheartened and damage their positive view of schools.  The last major problem is the way that teachers may view Year 7 students.  This issue arises when teachers (myself included) almost that we need to slowly ease all students in, giving them work which might not be as challenging as it could be. 

Differentiation within the top set where you find most HA students.  In most other classes, you will consider differentiation, possibly in how can I push the top end but more often what you can do to support the bottom end.  When it comes to a top set this doesn’t seem to happen as much.  What we need to be thinking about in terms of differentiation is, what we can put in place to really stretch the top end. 

A lack of stretch and challenge within lessons.  One of the main problems that comes up when you speak to HA students is that they don’t feel challenged in lessons.  In part this comes from the fact that often the teacher will feel that they need to impart as much knowledge as possible to HA students, so often fall into the lecturing trap!  This is possibly exactly the opposite to what HA student’s needs as they won’t find sitting & listening for a long period very challenging.

Peer pressure.  I could talk about this one all day however, there is already a wealth of research out there on this point.  For whatever reason, academic success is not something that often students want to exhibit to other students.  This often comes out as answering questions with “I don’t know” rather than stretching themselves.  Eventually this becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy and students convince themselves that they don’t actually know.

Students may develop a lack of desire to learn over time.  Although capable of completing their school work to a high level, they lack the initiative or motivation to succeed.  These are students that can do the work, are highly intelligent, but have decided that there are other things that are more important.  In many cases, they are distracted by out-side factors, emotional issues or a variety of other factors that are out of our control.  I think that out of all the possible reasons, this is the most unfortunate as there is a limited amount you can do. 

These reasons are by no means an exhaustive list but it gives us start point from which to work from.  So, the most important question we need to ask ourselves is “what can we as teachers do to push those HA students to make the expected level of progress when it comes to exam performance?”  I don’t claim to be an expert but here are some of my musings on ways to approach this issue.

The first major thing that we need to think about is what pedagogies can be used to truly stretch and challenge HA students.  I think that the conclusion that most of us have come to is that the main thing that will push these students is to get them to be self-reliant and able to independently teach themselves and others.  There are a variety of methods out there to get students teaching each other ranging from taking a section of the content in a lesson and teaching it to each other I small groups, all the way to mentoring.  Here are a few outlines of some methods I have used:

Micro-teaching:  Students are put in small groups and either given content or asked to research a specific topic.  Once they have done this, get them to put short presentations together that they can use to teach other groups with.  Th really stretch students ask them to think of one question each to ask the presenting group. 

Mentoring:  HA students can be used to mentor other HA students further down the school.  As most student’s will start their GCSEs in year 9 now, this mentoring of the content to younger students can act as excellent revision for HA students.

Putting together revision videos:  This is something of a new phenomenon in education, but as the technology is there it should be used.  Providing that the students aren’t physically filming themselves or others they can use diagrams and talk over them to produce revision videos for each other.

Open ended research tasks:   This one might not be appropriate for every subject, however, in many there should be an element of self-directed learning where they can explore their own interests within a subject.  One example which I’ve tried before is letting my Year 11 students who also take History to look into how the Haber process was exploited to enable Germany to make explosives and why Fritz Haber was convicted of war crimes.

The start point to many lessons centres around discussing concepts with students.  When pupils share their opinion with you, or with a partner during discussion, push them to explain what underpins that opinion. Do not let unsupported assertions escape without asking “Why?”, “What reasons do you have for thinking that?”. You can even train your pupils to start asking these questions of each other.  There are a few ways to help students do this but the easiest way I use is to let students choose who they are going to ask questions to rather than you as the teacher choosing.  This helps enable HA students to take ownership of the lesson so feel like they are in a small way in control of their own learning.

Avoid Worksheets:  One thing that is almost as bad as death by power point is death by worksheet!  For years one of the main approach to differentiating for the top end was to provide more worksheets for if they finish tasks early.  The main problem with this is that if students are finishing tasks a lot earlier than you would expect your pitching your tasks too low!  Nothing will bread resentment in your HA students like giving them more worksheets to do if they finish early as it can make them feel like they’re being punished for doing well.

Meaningful Homework (less is more!) The topic of homework can often be divisive among teachers as most of use can’t come to a consensus on how to set it.  There are several ways to set homework, you may set exam questions or revision tasks.  There has been a lot of talk about flipped learning over the last year, and after giving it a go I’ve found that it can work really well for HA students.  Flipped learning basically is an instructional strategy and a type of blended learning that reverses the traditional learning environment by delivering instructional content, often online, outside of the classroom. It moves activities, including those that may have traditionally been considered homework, into the classroom

Innovation:  Think out of the box!  HA students are extremely able so it’s an ideal opportunity to try all those innovative techniques that you’ve never dared try before.  In terms of lessons for HA students, they’ll really appreciate it and you’ll really enjoy teaching them.

Writing exam answer mark scheme or questions to use:  For those of us who are used to teaching exam groups every year, we all use exam questions especially when it comes to revision.  The question is how can we spice using exam questions up to ensure HA students are really engaging with them?  One method that I have used is to allow students to act as the examiner.  There are a few of ways I’ve found to do this:

1. Give students a variety of model answers and get them to mark them using a mark scheme.  Once they have done this you can question them about why they have given the marks they have.
2. Students can be given an exam question, then asked to construct a mark scheme for it.
3. Students can be showed the answer to a question, then asked to put together a question for that answer.

So, in conclusion here are some of my closing thoughts in the subject and what you need to consider before teaching any HA student.  Identifying the student’s next steps and creating cognitive dissonance.  This means being aware of exactly where you need your students to be heading and how you can enable them to get there. Injecting elements of novelty and variety into the learning experience.  This will help students keep that love of learning and so helps enable them to make progress without realising that they are working hard.  Offering opportunities for independence and self-direction.  You need to ensure the tasks you are setting are open ended so provide real opportunities for students to stretch themselves.  Providing opportunities to work with like-minded peers.  This is a bit of a no brainer.  The main thing that’s going to enable HA students to make progress is to enable them to teach themselves and others using group work. 

I hope that these ideas are different for many others out there and they have provided some inspiration for how you can stretch and challenge your HA students.

You can follow me on twitter @teacherchalky1 or on Facebook @teachlikeahero. 

Thanks for reading

D Chalk

What is independent learning & how can I use it in my own teaching?

One of the buzz words of 2016 was independent learning but the question I found myself asking is what is independent learning & how can I use it in my own teaching?  Independent learning is defined as when an individual is able to think, act and pursue their own studies autonomously, without the same levels of support you receive from a teacher at school.  So, what does this actually mean?  When I think about independent learning these are the main things that come to mind.

Independent learning helps stretch higher ability students.  This is because when students are working independently they need to be self-sufficient.  Often the skills they need to develop in order for this to happen go hand in hand with higher order thinking skills.

Independent learning helps students develop a growth mindset.  Dweck defines growth mindset as “In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment”

When planning independent learning tasks, try, and enable students room for manoeuvre so that they can be creative, think out of the box or both.  There are a few ways round this. When setting homework tasks that will .really stretch the independence of students, give them options to choose from.  In lessons think about tasks that are going to challenge your students and cause them to have to access the lesson content in a way that they will have to be able to explain it to another student if they have to.  

If students are working independently then they must be doing something by themselves.  This was the first main misconception on my part as what I’ve come to believe is that what independent learning really is, is any sort of learning where I’m not directly responsible for what students are learning.  This also means that students can still be learning independently when working in groups or pairs.

If students are working independently then they will by divine intervention, make more progress!  The second realisation I’ve had is that even though independent learning promotes higher level thinking, you don’t need to try and crowbar it into every lesson as it’s not always appropriate.  A more important point is that there is no rule that says that even if you have set an independent learning task there’s no reason that you can’t still give your students guidance or a framework to work within.

Independent learning doesn’t just mean homework.  For years, this was a common misconception made by many teachers across the board.  You can plan independent learning tasks into your lessons.  The most important thing to think about when doing this is to start with the independent learning task you want your students to do, then construct your lesson around it as your students will need to be pre-equipped with the tools they need to complete the task effectively.   

Independent learning should help increase student’s confidence and motivation in lessons.  Because student’s are taking responsibility for their own learning they will be able to help direct the direction they take.  If students are helping to choose how they are learning they should become more motivated about their own learning.  If students are engaged within their learning it should make them more confident about explaining what they are learning.

The final realisation I’ve come to believe about independent learning is that it allows students to work at their own pace.  And with that in an ideal world you’ve discovered the holy grail of teaching.  A pedagogy that allows differentiation, the stretches the most able students, that frees up the teacher in the lesson to help support less able students and that allows students to be creative in their own learning.  If only it was that easy.

The question that I heard asked time and again is “how can I effectively use independent learning within my own teaching?”  This is a question that I’ve been wrestling with for a long time, and I think that I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel.  Below I have tried to outline some of the methods and activities I use to help independent learning both within and outside of my lessons. 

Get students to teach each other using micro-teaching.  Micro teaching involves students teaching each other ideas & content during a lesson.  There is lots of evidence that shows that students make the greatest amount of progress when they have to explain ideas & concepts to each other. Below I have outlined how to carry out a micro teaching activity with students and have tried to detail some of the possible preparation that needs to be in place to ensure that this activity has a meaningful impact on student progress.

The first stage in any micro teaching activity is to enable students to gather the information for themselves.  If students have to find things out for themselves they will make more progress than if they are just spoon fed it.  This can be done in many different ways.

• Flipped learning:  Before the lesson you can let students know what they will be teaching and then set appropriate videos for them to watch. Students can then use this to make notes on the content they need in preparation for the next lesson.
• Directed reading:  Students can be given the content they will be producing a micro teaching presentation or short lesson on.  This method works most effectively when students have to pick out key information from the text and then have it taken away before they start interacting with other groups.
• Use exam questions:  During revision, different groups of students can be given different exam questions that they need to explain to other students how to answer.
• Information hunt:  Before beginning the micro teaching activity, put key information around the room that students will need to use.  Give students some time in small groups to go around and gather the information they need to carry out the micro teaching activity.
• Once students have collected the information they need, they need to put together a short lesson or presentation on a particular concept.  This can take the form of a traditional short presentation or a short lesson where students have prepared some simple resources to help them teach.  
• Once your students are ready set them up work around rows of tables as shown in the pictures below

After students have worked around all the other groups you can carry out more traditional AFL to assess how much progress students have made. 

Open ended homework tasks:  These do pretty much what it says on the tin, they provide students with an opportunity to expand their own learning outside of the classroom in a direction that interests them.  There are a few ways to approach this form of independent learning:

1. Set students a general inquiry question that they must research then produce some sort of report on.
2. Set homework tasks which allow students multiple routes to get to an outcome.
3. Allow students to collaboratively to produce a video on a certain topic

Modelling activities:  When getting students to build models to explore concepts you still need to start with the content, however, you don’t necessarily need to stand at the front of the class and physically teach it.  The first step in allowing students to construct models is to allow them to collect or put together the information they need to help them build the model themselves.  This can be done in a few ways; you can use flipped learning and set students a series of youtube videos to watch & make notes on to help them, or lay out a range of information and allow students to gather what they need in small groups.  In some cases, you can give students a sheet with the content on and allow them to highlight what they think is relevant. 

Once students have the information they need, don’t assume they will automatically know where to start.  In many lessons where students are given a chance to build models to explore concepts there isn’t just one correct answer, however, there will still be a range of criteria that students need to incorporate into their models.  Before students start building their models don’t forget to give them a rough frame work to help them structure their ideas that they will incorporate.  In some cases, when you are giving students a task to complete where there is lots of scope for interpretation, it is worth showing students examples to help them get going.

Allowing students opportunities to feedback on each other’s work.  Peer marking is often a contentious method. Using it relies on students understanding what the correct answer is and that they will be able to mark answer without being overly harsh or generous.  The other major problem with peer marking is the quality of the feedback that they give each other.  If the feedback they give doesn’t aid progress has it been worth the time it has taken them to give it?  The way that I think effective peer marking should be carried out follows a few key concepts.

Firstly, if I’m getting students to do any peer marking I get them to do it in green pen.  If students do their marking in green it is easy for them to distinguish between their marking and mine.  It also gives an opportunity to easily comment and give feedback on the quality of peer feedback.

When getting students to make each other’s work don’t presume that they will automatically know how to do it.  It’s been my experience that most students have no idea how to mark a piece of work.  The way to get around this is to give students a strict framework to mark to.  If you want students to mark for SPAG, give them the key words that need to be spelt correctly.  If you want students to mark for specific content get them using a mark scheme to allow them to see what the correct answers are.  Using peer marking takes some time to get right as your students will need some training, however, it’s a useful tool to have I your arsenal.

Allow students to set their own tasks:  This one does come with a little health and safety warning, I would only use it with a class that I felt confident with, and which I’d already set a relatively strict framework for students to work within.  The first thing to do is to ensure that you share the lesson outcomes with students so they know what they need to achieve by the end of the lesson.  From there it’s up to them to set their own task to get there.  Put students in small groups or pairs to do this and then ask each group what they have decided to do to make sure that they will achieve what you want.

Group brain storming activities:  This is a short activity that can allow small groups of students to feed off each other’s creativity, therefore helping each other to expand their own learning.  Start with giving your students a topic to work on expanding it with as much as they can think around it.  Then rotate students around each other’s work and get them to expand on what’s already written.  Continue this process until students are back at their original work, then get them to use the information to compete some sort of collaborative task.

Interrogating the text:  Students are given an unfamiliar piece of text.  In pairs or small groups they are asked to:

1. Formulate important questions the text should be able to answer, or they hope the text will answer.
2. Read the text, highlighting key points,
3. Discuss the key points and agree answers to the questions formulated in ‘1’.

This is by no means a complete list of the things you can give a go; however, they are some of the methods I’ve given a go and have worked pretty well.  I hope that these ideas have provided some inspiration for how you can use independent learning within your own lessons.

You can follow me on twitter @teacherchalky1 or on Facebook @teachlikeahero. 

Thanks for reading

D Chalk