Above their pay grade
‘Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning and studying.’
- Pele
We have a tendency to make things too easy for too many of our pupils. Why is this? It is partly because we don’t want to overwhelm them, and we often think that we think they can’t cope. And yet pupils are saying that they relish the challenge of demanding work: work which makes them think and which means that they know more and can do more.
When a group of high prior attaining Yr 9 pupils who were generally underperforming, were asked whether there was a subject where they consistently did their best work, the response was geography. When questioned about the reasons for this, they replied that their teacher regularly gave them material to read from publications like the National Geographic. She told them that their homework was to read this material and also reassured them that it would not matter if they didn’t understand everything. This was because at the start of the next lesson the class would talk about what they did understand and what they didn’t. They relished the intellectual rigour and challenge of this demanding material.
Similarly, in a primary school when pupils were asked what they thought about ability tables in their classroom, their responses related to the level of challenging work they were given: the ‘more able’ enjoyed being the bright ones and having special challenges set by the teacher; the middle group were annoyed that they didn’t get the same work and challenges the top group had, but they had realised that there were only six seats on the top table. Meanwhile the bottom table were affected the most: they felt dumb, useless, they like the sound of some of the challenges the top group had, but they knew they would never get the chance[1]. What is happening here, is that interesting, demanding work is being rationed. These assumptions are based on flawed notions of what children are capable of.
In another example, in history, Richard Kennett, a senior leader in a school in Bristol, when teaching about the Norman Conquest provides pupils in Yr 7 with extracts from Marc Morris’ book. Their homework task is to read the extracts and answer the questions. However, they are not to worry if they can’t answer them all, because this is difficult work. What happens as a result of being given this demanding work? All the pupils, some with a reading age below ten, were able to access the work and offer answers. When asked why the class were being given demanding texts, Richard’s response was that in class they were reading and discussing extracts from Simon Schama’s account of the Norman Conquest. His intention was to show the class that while there might be historical events, historians disagree about the significance and impact of those events. What happened here, was that taking pupils into the disciplinary discourse normally reserved for A Level students it becomes apparent that they are able to access it.
Similarly, in primary, Ashley Booth, in reading Maya Angelou’s ‘The Caged Bird Sings’ a low prior attaining child is able to make sophisticated connections between the captive bird and conditions for some communities during the time of segregation in the United States.
What is sitting behind these examples is scaffolding and support. Not scaffolding by dumbing down through offering pupils easier work, but in providing them with the means to reach into the material. This scaffolding is done primarily through talk.
One of the barriers to offering pupils demanding texts is a concern that they are not able to decode the words, or that not all pupils are at the same level. This might be the case, but we need to separate phonics training from taxing, demanding material. Listening to and discussing substantial texts in the classroom means that all pupils have access to the more demanding material. We also know that comprehension involves making hypotheses about what words mean, and this applies to listening as much as to reading. ‘Listening ability is key to reading ability and does not have to be slowed down by decoding’.[2]To be clear, this is not to make the case that decoding is not important: it is in fact fundamental to reading. The case that is being made, is that pupils should have access to material which is higher than their decoding ability. This is because the learning of concepts and new words efficiently is best served by reading aloud to children together with classroom discussion.
‘Children are intensely interested in grown-up knowledge. They feel empowered. And they are.’[3] who goes on to argue that children should hear and discuss highly interesting and demanding subject matters. They are eager to do so. The most efficient and secure way to learn new words is incidental word learning via topic familiarity.
In ‘Respectable: Crossing the Class Divide,’[4] Lynsey Hanley describes her childhood growing up in Chelmsley Wood hear Birmingham. She attended school in the 1980’s and in the book she describes the impact of a teacher who taught her as a ten year old: ‘He took us seriously, not in the sense that he treated us like miniature adults, but that we had a right to be heard, as much as any adult or middle class child had a right to be heard. At the beginning of the year, he instituted two weekly institutions, the quiz and the debate…a chance to learn new things and to have our ideas contested. I never saw stronger evidence that you are made ignorant through what is withheld from you.’
What then, are the things that we are withholding from our pupils? How often do we say to ourselves that this is too hard? How high are we prepared to pitch our material? After all, many of them are saying that this is exactly what they are crying out for.
[1] Willingham, D (2010) Why Don't Students Like School? Jossey-Bass
[2] ibid
[3] Pinker, S (1995) The Language Instinct How the Mind Creates Language: The New Science of Language and Mind Penguin
[4] AL-Kalby, M (2013) The Apple Tree: The Prophet Says Series Prolance