From Able to Remarkable

Help Your Students Become Expert Learners

Robert Massey

• Publisher: Crown House Publishing
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781785834585
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

In From Able to Remarkable: Help your students become expert learners, Robert Massey provides a pathway to help teachers guide their students through the gauntlets of the gifted, the underpasses of underachievement and the roadblocks to remarkable on their learning journeys.

What makes remarkable students remarkable? Attributes such as resilience, curiosity and intelligence may come to mind and we might also add others, such as intuition and tenacity. But what has helped make them what they are?

Were they born this way, or did their 'remarkabilities' emerge during their schooling? Such questions may make teachers feel uneasy, prompting them to reflect on the sometimes limiting scope of what is often labelled as 'gifted and talented provision' in their school.

Robert Massey argues, however, that these remarkabilities are there, latent and dormant, in many more students than we might at first acknowledge. In From Able to Remarkable Robert shares a rich variety of practical, cross-curricular strategies designed to help teachers unearth and nurture these capabilities and signpost a route to the top for every learner.

Informed by educational research and evidence from the field of cognitive science, the book talks teachers through a wide range of effective teaching and learning techniques all of which are appropriate for use with all pupils and not only with top sets or high attainers. Robert also shares ideas on how teachers can improve their students' abilities to receive, respond to and then deliver feedback on both their own work and that of others. To complement the feedback process, he presents practical methods to help teachers make questioning, self-review and greater student ownership of their questioning within lessons a staple of day-to-day classroom interaction.

Venturing beyond the classroom, the book also explores approaches to whole-school provision for high-attaining students and offers some robust stretch and challenge to educational leaders in considering what widespread excellence in education might look like.

Suitable for teachers and gifted and talented coordinators in both primary and secondary schools.

Part 1:

Starting Our Learning Journey

Chapter 1

What’s in a Name?

From Able to Remarkable

We can maximize the intelligence of all students by ensuring that all students are exposed to maximally challenging environments from as early as possible for as long as possible.

Dylan Wiliam, ‘Measuring “Intelligence”: What Can We Learn and How Can We Move Forward?’ (2005)

Key themes

• Teaching to the top means getting the approach to provision for high-attaining students right, and that begins at whole-school level with a common currency of agreed and appropriate names and labels.
• Whatever names and labels are chosen as appropriate for a particular college or school, everyone in the school community needs to know and understand what they mean.
• A rich and stimulating school environment will make more of its pupils more intelligent, remarkably.
• Expert learners are made, not born. Excellence in classrooms should be the outcome for the many, not the few.

All kinds of names and labels are attached to more able provision, and it is no one’s job to tell a particular school or teacher what is right or wrong about any given appellation, provided that its implications have been considered and the context is appropriate. Certainly, public bodies such as Ofsted and universities are entirely relaxed about what schools and colleges consider suitable for their needs, and this includes nomenclature. If your school or college has thought about your terminology and it forms part of a coherent approach and policy, you can safely treat comments from an outside source as friendly advice and an alternative perspective rather than instruction from on high.

For me, ‘excellence’ is the most relevant and overarching term to apply. If ‘gifted and talented’ has any redeeming merits as a label it is because it implies an association between a pupil and excellence in one or more areas. But other terms make the same connection without connotations of preordained, deterministic advantage, which is why they are much to be preferred. What matters is that pupils are being stretched and challenged. Not just some – the scholars or the high prior attainers. Everyone, all the time.

Excellence for the many, not the few

Ruth Powley is a deputy head at a secondary school in Cheshire. At a talk I attended in 2013, she made the excellent point that students sometimes self-limit their expectations and abilities in order to fit a ‘life script’. This certainly throws into question the ‘5% gifted and talented’ model some schools use. Ruth advocated a school ambition plan and an aspiration programme for students and parents with guest speakers, university visits and financial advice about higher education. I would endorse this. My own counsel would be to include students and parents in establishing and reviewing a high-attainer programme.

What does this wider community regard as student excellence in music, maths or electronics? How would pupils label their peers, and why? Do parents understand your current system in the same way that teachers do? Some student voice work or SurveyMonkey evidence may well throw up interesting insights about what your community wants from a programme for high-attaining students. What methods are currently being used in your school to differentiate high-attaining pupils, and do the pupils think they are working?

The same point applies, of course, to learning support students. In my school, the assistant head of learning support sees every learning support student once a term expressly to complete a questionnaire about whether the reality of lessons matches the fine words of the departmental policy. The results for each year group are then distributed to heads of subject. This is evidence from the chalkface to triangulate against book scrutinies and learning walks, among other information. What would be the result in your school of a similar survey among your high-attaining pupils? Learning support students need access to high attainment too.

When I started thinking about this subject, my initial view was that labels mattered little. Provided that the approach was right, talking about Asif and Yolanda as ‘high ability’ or ‘bright’ or whatever was fine because the school setting contextualised the label, and a good fit was almost always assured between expectations and outcomes. But then I realised that what we call things in schools does matter. At a whole-school level labels set tones. They give evidence of those elusive concepts – the ethos and culture of a school. If a head is keen to re-examine or change the culture of a school, she can gain a quick and easy win by looking at why things are called what they are, from classrooms themselves to groups of students to areas of school life. In my school, I’ve advocated the use of ‘enrichment’ to replace ‘activities’. If we value what staff and students are sharing as more than just doing something together at the same time (activities) but see it as deepening and making more valuable that shared time together, let’s choose a name for it that reflects what we aspire to (enrichment). By itself a new name may be seen as mere window dressing, but if it foreshadows and accompanies a changing attitude and approach to an area of school life then it is justified as being more than cosmetic.

Labels stick to us

Labelling pupil groups is more problematic. Do we tell pupils their labels? What happens when one boy works out that he is in the middle set or, far worse, bottom set? Is he branded for his whole school career? The setting may legitimately be based on Key Stage 2 outcomes, but once in a set, do the expectations of the teacher and the pace of learning mean they stay there for the duration of their school career? How can their learning trajectory change? What kind of learning journey are they on if they have no parental support or a limited interest in, and familiarity with, school structures?

Some teachers with pastoral roles say that tackling inflated or unnecessarily deflated student self-esteem is one of the biggest challenges they face. Having a programme, or even just a designated level, for high ability students leads to inevitable questions about the rest – necessarily constituting a majority of the school. Ideally, therefore, labels will be as neutral and evidence informed as possible in accordance with professional standards and the culture of the school. This is another reason to prefer, for example, ‘high attainers’.

My wife teaches in an academy chain which uses HPA, MPA and LPA (high, middle and low prior attainers). I like this and can see few difficulties in explaining to a governor, parent or pupil what this means and why a particular label applies to Anna or Maya right now. The terms are benchmarked to data and not end capped. If students can move from red to amber to green without waiting a term (or worse, a full academic year); if the terms are light-touch, professional guidance rather than dead weights in marble attached to a girl for her entire school career; and if they are subject to challenge and review (what else is data for?) rather than fixed in a folder on a deputy head’s shelf (not desk), that’s fine.

There is another reason why we can’t just follow the nursery rhyme and say that ‘names will never hurt us’. Remember my story from John Tomsett in the Introduction about teaching Shakespeare to a mixed-ability Year 7 set to a very high level? My view is that when a teacher takes a class for a period of time without knowledge of prior attainment or target grades, but just teaches them with high expectations and no sense of whether they are of middle ability, for example, the outcomes improve. This may be anecdotal and unscientific, at best correlation rather than causation, but it is something to ponder. Consciously and unconsciously we may all be much more deeply and subtly influenced by descriptors than we would like to think. An argument from this is not to have special programmes at all for high attainers and perhaps to not even set at all, but to offer a genuinely comprehensive education in every classroom. That would be excellent. The following table sets out some of the issues surrounding the labelling of high-attaining students.

Label	Positives	Negatives	Comments
Gifted	A familiar term, especially in the United States. We know that it somehow equates to being clever. There is merit in keeping to names and meanings which we all recognise.	It implies an innate ability and perhaps a genetic advantage (e.g. ‘a gifted linguist’, ‘a mathematics student of rare gifts’). It is confused with ‘talented’.	The term traditionally identifies a student having abilities in more than one academic subject. It is an older term which does not reflect research in behavioural psychology. What room does ‘gifted’ leave for attainment? What account does it take of effort, motivation or the adept cultivation of effective study habits? While it may be a useful shorthand in education circles, it should be abandoned.
Talented	As with ‘gifted’, there is an implication of excellence.	As with ‘gifted’.	The term traditionally identifies a student having skills in a broad area – for example, sport or art. Again, the term implies innate abilities which pupils either have or don’t have: ‘She’s really talented in the creative arts.’ Deliberate, purposeful practice always underpins any so-called talent. The term should be abandoned.
Outstanding	In common use, so widely recognised and applied.	Outstanding by comparison with whom? In one subject or all?	Qualifiers such as ‘outstanding’ convey a common-sense meaning and therefore have a place in the busy world of schools. If used more narrowly to identify a cohort of high-attaining pupils, however, they should be benchmarked: outstanding in relation to what level or target or cohort of pupils?
Able/more able	In common use, so widely recognised and applied. These terms are commonly used by official bodies (e.g. Ofsted, Department for Education).	These are comparative terms which beg many questions: are these synonyms for ‘bright’ students or do they refer to particular, defined cohorts?	As with terms such as ‘outstanding’ there is a case for being relaxed about the everyday use and meaning of ‘able’ and ‘more able’. However, there is confusion between ability and attainment – see discussion on page 37. ‘More able’ than which pupils, and at what data point?
High achievers	In common use, so widely recognised and applied.	‘High’ in relation to what? What achievements are being measured, and why?	‘Achievement’ is a useful overarching term which includes, for example, academic attainment but can also incorporate musical or sporting accomplishments, among many others. Careful definition is needed of how these pupils’ performances are being measured in relation to their cohort. Are outcomes being end capped because the achievement has already happened?
High attainers	A precise term which readily lends itself to definition by referring to statistical outcomes from an identified cohort of students.	‘High’ in relation to what – a past target, current performance or future expectations? What attainments are being measured, and why?	‘Attainment’ is a helpful term which focuses on reaching or exceeding an academic target; it fits nicely within the wider label of achievement. This term will suit some schools. But … attainment is not the same as ability. High attainment may be unevenly distributed – for example, to girls at GCSE or to higher socio-economic groups.
High prior attainers (HPAs)/high-attaining pupils (HAPs)	As above. It keeps attainment under review and acknowledges that changes can happen in the future.	As above, but it allows students who have made progress to join the cohort.	High current attainers (HCAs) is another variation used by some schools. These terms are data supported and will suit many schools.
High starters	This term attempts to move away from ideas of fixed or innate ability by acknowledging that even the more able students in a cohort can make progress, with no limits.	Is the term sufficiently well-known and understood to be meaningful?	This term is gaining in popularity. It has the great merit of not seeming to cap progress, unlike ‘high achievers’. It posits a promising beginning and not an end. But … does it risk being seen as a synonym for ‘gifted’ – that is, these pupils start from a higher position than their peers. But what? Higher IQ? Higher capacity? What is the starting point, and how high is it?
Scholar	This word emphasises academic ability but can be refined (e.g. drama scholar, sports scholar). It has strong associations with high attainment.	This bears ‘public school’ or ‘posh’ implications. It has unavoidable associations with exclusivity.	Ofsted now embraces the term ‘scholar’ and unashamedly refers to ‘scholarship’ in inspection reports. This term works in the context of my own school but may well not work everywhere.

For the purposes of this book, I will use ‘high attaining’ as a suitable descriptor for students performing at a significantly higher level than their peers. This term has the benefit of precision because it can be referenced to a set of data. Where it seems contrived and inflexible to stick to a single term, I will use the common sense labels ‘more able’ or ‘highly able’ still deployed by official bodies such as Ofsted, although that usage may change...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Foreword by David Didau
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Epigraph
• Introduction: Starting Our Learning Journey
• Part 1: Starting Our Learning Journey
• Part 2: The Expert Learner
• Part 3: Excellence for All
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Copyright