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