R.

 Linguistic terminology – more sophisticated and fully embedded into discussions  Academic phrasing

 Move away from rigid formula

 More real life examples (journalistic style) than the books (Collate a bank of these resources)  A-level articles from library – (English Review) – using for practice

 Ks3 assessments – more essay style, plan like controlled assessments  Shakespeare text in KS3

 Theatre – Shakespeare to remove fear factor  Introduction to A*/A criteria (year 9)

 Encourage enthusiasm through discussion

 A*/A extracurricular group for those with the potential

 KS3 develop schemes more – lengthier/more detailed/how to write an essay

 Essay writing drop-in – any topic (homework projects) work to deadlines, Year 9 project homework

 Bibliography – encourage them to use these  Wider reading

 Year 9 locate and retrieve practice  Consistency with teacher

 Visit other centres  Learner voice

 Suitability of material e.g. text choice – range  Access to materials – classwork drive

 Suitability of staff/experience – shared practice  Mentoring of most able by the most able linking to  English G&T events, writer visits, theatre visits  Teaching within bands

 X team abs – informal)  Pace/structure

 Discovery lists

 Y12/13 guest speakers

 Real audiences – real life/real world speeches – Amnesty International, UNICEF, Christian Aid, Salvation Army

 Photocopy /share examples – analyse why it is exemplary?  Targeted groups/intervention for specific groups

 Exemplar work folder

 Differentiate up within the schemes, texts and PowerPoint’s  What skills does and A* have?

 Everyday use of subject terminology/vocab within the classroom and within students’ work  A language glossary of terms in each classroom/per student – use this in our teacher talk  A literary glossary of terms

 Y7 – guide reading and writing at the A/B borderline  Y9 – last half term

 Y7,8 & 9 – differentiated schemes and texts e.g. 3 passages (a) 1 for set 1 (b) 1 for set 2 (c) 1 for set 3 etc. Teacher models, lots of additional non-fiction homeworks

 Movement between groups within a year  Real life examples of S&L

 Kids teaching sessions  College type reading lists  Drama and kinaesthetic learning

 What do more successful departments do? How do science do it?  AM with A*/A set 1 group of Y10, set 2 group Y10

 Drop in centre once per week for set 1 and set 2 year 10 groups so that learners from other groups can meet up.

 Theatre trips, readings

 Look at how other WJEC centres have achieved higher percentage of A*/A grades  Look at differentiating through exam boards

 Get names of the centres in NW from WJEC, of those who are already achieving high levels of A*/A grade passes

 Contact JH

 Speak to A* students to find out what did it for them and those who should have been A* but missed to find out what was it that prevented them from achieving their potential  High ability students don’t work on a 4 part lesson plan

 Quality pods with A* leader

 Start looking at new schemes of work or adding additional differentiated resources, ppts, texts to the ones we already have

 Using linguistic terminology right from inception (Y7) i.e. lexical field and embed into discussions, mini tests to check learners have memorised terminology and meaning  gifted and talented pupils to be supported through the use of an IEP (Individual Education

Plan)

 cross-curricular activities helps develop multiple intelligences by pairing a practical and theoretical subject in an investigation of a shared theme

Qualities

• is intently focused • asks insightful questions • sees beyond the obvious

• provides creative and original solutions • has a great intellectual curiosity • learns easily and readily • shows initiative and originality • possesses unusual imagination

Author Date/Title Publisher

Case Studies of More Able Pupils in Primary Schools

Case Studies of More Able Pupils in Secondary Schools

Oxford:NACE

Butler-Por,N. 1987 Underachievers in Schools: Issues and Interventions

London: John Wiley

Casey,R. and Koshey,V.

1995 Bright Challenges Stanley Thornes

Clark,C. and Callow, R.

1998 Educating Able Children London: Fulton

Dean,G. 1998 Challenging the More Able Language User London: NACE/Fulton

DfEE 1999 Excellence inCities Nottingham:DfEE Pubs.

Dickinson,C. 1996 Effective Learning Activities Stafford: Network Educational Press Eyre,D. 1997 Able Children in Ordinary Schools London: David Fulton

Eyre,D. 1998 Teaching Able Pupils Oxford: NACE

Fisher,R. 1990 Teaching Children to Think Cheltenham: Stanley Thornes

Freeman,J. 1991 Gifted Children Growing Up London: Cassell Educational Ltd. Freeman,J 1998 Educating The Very Able: International

Research

London: HMSO

George, D. 1997 Gifted Education: Identification and Provision

London: David Fulton

HMI 1992 Education Observed: The Education of Very Able in Maintained Schools

London: HMSO

House of Commons Education and Employment Committee

1999 Highly Able Children London: The Stationary Office

Kennard.R. 1997 Teaching Mathematically Able Pupils Oxford: NACE Leydon,S. 1998 Supporting the Child with Exceptional

Ability

London: David Fulton

Montgomery,D. 1995 Educating The Able London: Cassell

O'Brien,P. 1998 Teaching Scientifically Able Children in the Secondary School

Oxford: NACE

O'Brien,P. 1998 Teaching Scientifically Able Pupils in the Primary School

Oxford: NACE

Porter,L. 1999 Gifted Young Children Open University Press

Educational Press Teare,J.B. 1997 Effective Provision for Able and Talented

Children

Stafford: Network Educational Press Teare,J.B. 1999 Effective Resources for Able and Talented

Children

Stafford: Network Educational Press

Sample starter/thinking activities (Getting set) cognitive warm-ups for stretching and challenging our most talented learners.

A. Mind Spy

As indicated, this is basically ‘I spy’, but with the object of ‘spying’ being imagined in the mind’s eye.

then sit back to back and instruct B how they might recreate the drawing, but by referring only to

lines, lengths and directions – not shapes, such as circles or squares, and certainly not objects such

as windows.

And here is another more elaborate, but rich, variation:

Your Space

Begin with a visualisation (eyes closed): ‘Imagine one of your favourite places, perhaps a holiday, or

your bedroom, or a park.. Imagine going there now, taking your time.. Imagine being there now,

looking around.. Prepare to talk about it..’

• Invite A’s to tell B’s about their spaces.

• Invite B’s to tell A’s about their spaces.

• Invite everyone to show by thumbs (up, down or sideways) how well they felt able to imagine

each other’s spaces.

The variations on the visualisation aspect of this activity could be great – depending on your, or your

pupils’, imaginations themselves.

One variation that could be especially helpful for developing inquiry skills would be to encourage pupils to ‘wind back’ their visualisations (sometimes called ‘Mind Movies’), e.g. if they went on some

sort of ‘journey’ in their minds. As noted in B (i), being able to track back over ideas or stages is a

valuable skill. What reinforces its value in this case is the fact that the tracking is deliberately metacognitive: pupils are being asked to introspect and assume greater control over their own thinking.

Another aspect of the activity that can be varied is the element of ‘favourites’. This powerful adjective/noun can give direct access to a wide range of pupils’ experiences and feelings, e.g. favourite films, books, characters, foods, etc. Of course, just identifying one’s favourites is no great

skill in itself, and here are some variations that push for more depth or subtlety of thinking:

(i) Link the idea of ‘favourite’ to the idea of

‘criteria’, explaining these as ‘what makes you

decide’

– in this case, that X is your favourite. Pupils could then be asked to make a list of the criteria that they would use to decide, e.g. Where to go for holiday, or What makes a good neighbour. Of course, effectively one is asking the question ‘Why (is that your favourite)?’ But talk of criteria (as opposed to its singular, ‘criterion’) draws attention to the likelihood of there being more than one reason for counting something as your favourite. Thus, one is pushing for depth and complexity, rather than settling for the superficial and simplistic. (N.B. Other useful words in this neck of the ‘thinking’ woods are: features and properties.)

(ii) Play the song,

‘My Favourite Things’ (from ‘The Sound of Music’), and invite pupils to make a

list of 5 of their favourite things, and to compare lists in pairs or trios. You might even open up an inquiry, before or after they make their lists, by asking what the pupils think of the list in the song. If someone regards it as sentimental or ‘soppy’, for example, you might push them to explain that judgement, or even, further, what sort of things ‘press their buttons’ if not those.

consistent with the emphasis in this inquiry on caring thinking. In effect, pupils are being challenged

to think empathetically - out of their own ‘spaces’ into the spaces/worlds of others. ‘Your Space’ could, then, effectively be re-titled ‘Your View’, and then a range of possibilities opens up. Here

are

a couple of suggestions:

(iii) Present the class with a list of 4 or 5 matters in which they might be expected to have

views

or opinions, e.g. ‘What are your views about: supermarkets, comic relief, advertisements, hoodies, etc.’ Then ask them to talk in pairs about one or more of these matters, and to see how much they agree and how much they disagree with each other.

(iv) Invite the class to make their own list of 4 or 5 matters for exploration in a ‘YourView’

conversation.

(v) Once pupils are used to such conversations, invite them to go straight into pairs and provide

each other with a topic of their own for exploration, e.g. ‘What’s your view on X?’ This would almost certainly result in their seeking out each other’s views during inquiries, especially if you encourage their conversations to include other questions, such as ‘What makes you think that?’ or ‘What if someone said …?’

B. Stand Up

This is a real favourite and can be repeated in its basic form many times without pupils tiring of it.

Apart from embodying and practising the principle of OOPSAAT (Only One Person

Speaks/Stands

At A Time), it encourages patience and awareness of others (key aspects of emotional and social learning).

Some large or excitable classes, however, may find it hard to achieve a ‘full house’, in which case success can be built gradually over several sessions, by dividing the class into groups of 6, then 8,

then 10, and finally into two equal groups.

The only thing to be wary of in that approach is the risk of its becoming competitive. But even then

children may quickly realise that the more competitive they are, the less chance they might have of

‘winning’. So, you could emphasise that this is the sort of activity where the most collaborative groups are the more likely to succeed.

You might even find that the activity itself provides the basis for an inquiry into the concepts of

‘winning’, ‘succeeding’, ‘competition’, ‘patience’, etc.!

There are, besides, some good variations on the basic activity:

(i) It could start, or be combined, with either

‘countdown’ or ‘countup’, i.e. with (random)

pupils

calling out a number in sequence, from 1 upwards to X, or from X downwards to 1.

(ii) You could reverse the process, by starting with everyone on their feet, and asking them to

‘Sit Down’ one at a time.

(iii) The previous variation can lead on to yet another – of sitting down two at a time (‘Sit Down

in

(iv) Then again, the last variation might remind one of

‘Wink Murder’, which is another simple

activity to encourage pupils to look around the group, seeking eye contact.

(With everyone standing, and closing their eyes, you tap one person on the shoulder and she becomes

the ‘murderer’. Eyes are opened, and then the murderer proceeds to wink at individuals when they

make eye contact with her. Anyone seeing the wink sits down, as if ‘dead’, and the activity proceeds

until just one or two people have not been ‘murdered’, at which point you might give the game away.)

C. Connections

This activity may also be called ‘Links’ or ‘Associations’, and each of these is a good,

alternative,

‘thinking’ word to introduce into pupils’ vocabulary at some point. The latter, especially, lead into ‘particular, or common’ associations, such as ‘peaches and cream’, etc. Pupils could be asked, for example, to see how many such particular associations they can come up with (Xs and Ys), or even, as

in the TV game, see whether there might be several common associations, and which of these might

be the most common.

As explained in Inquiry Plan 2, the activity of ‘associating’ is random, in the sense that anyone can

stand up and make an association, and it need not be a common one at all (though they are asked to

give some sort of reason for making it). But the activity could proceed equally well just around the

circle.

Here are other possible variations:

(i) Instead of giving reasons, the next person to make a link could be required to repeat all the

elements of the ‘chain’ so far, as in the party game ‘In my suitcase I packed A, B, C, etc.’ In

this case, the chain might simply be, for example, ‘Cow - linked to Milk – linked to Bottle – linked to Glass, etc.’ Such lists can get a little tedious if there are too many pupils, or some forgetful ones, so one might limit lists to a sequence of any 3 items (cf. ‘Last 3 speakers’). But the practice of being able to track a chain of ideas is a very valuable one for any purpose, and especially for building up pupils’ capacity to follow an inquiry or argument.

(ii) The items in a list, say of 20, could be written on the board as they are called out, and then

the class works collaboratively to make and explain new links between the items, e.g. ‘Cow

links to Bottle because they both have necks’. Of course, this same activity could be done with

20 items called out by the pupils at random.

(iii) Developing this idea, the 20 items could be put into two columns, each of 10. Pupils are then

put into pairs or trios and asked to link (or ‘map’) each item on the left with just one item on

the right. Different pairs or trios are likely to make different links, which could be explored in plenary, or by ‘snowballing’ (i.e. putting two pairs/trios together).

(iv) A nice, practical variation on the previous one is to add an

11th item to the right hand column

and, when every pair/trio has linked all 10 from the left to right, ask each one which item was their ‘11th one out’. Again, differences can be explored.

(v) Finally, the whole idea of ‘linking’ leads naturally into one of the most favoured ‘thinking’

activities, namely ‘Odd One Out’. For this, only 3 items are needed. They can even be picked

(objects, or pictures, or just words). Pupils are asked to come up with as many links as they can between any two items but not linking with the third. For example, with Cow, Milk and Bottle, Milk could be the odd one out because the other two have necks, or are solid; or Bottle could be the odd one out because humans consume cows and milk, but not bottles; or Cow could be the odd one out because you can buy milk and bottles in the shops, but not cows. (N.B. This activity is much favoured for developing thinking because it provides a basis for analytical thinking as well as analogical, i.e. for making distinctions as well as comparisons.)

D. Would you Rather?

This is based on John Burningham’s well-known picture book, but there are all sorts of scenarios used now, many of them available via google. Often there is a choice between 4 things, and each of

the things can be ‘put’ in a corner of the room, inviting people to go to the corner of their choice.