View from the classroom
up policy; used learning logs; implemented hot and cold tasks for Literacy and Numeracy; adjusted our planning regularly; used ‘feeling’ post it notes at the start of new topics; implemented a help desk; used our TAs differently; trained the children to adjust their tasks if they were too challenging or easy; used different vocabulary in the classroom; focussed on how to learn rather than what they learn. It is impossible to put into words how much these processes collectively changed and challenged teachers, teaching assistants and most importantly our children.
How does it differ from the usual? We didn’t initially realise that just getting rid of one element of our practice would have such a knock on effect to our daily classroom habits. We still taught the curriculum we wanted to but our daily classroom management and conversations we had with the children changed dramatically. It took a while for the children to get used to ‘no hands up’ and they saw great benefits in working with a new learning partner each week. By the end of the year they were very reflective and honest about their choices of challenge and their choice of learning partner. Some children even stated ‘ I’m not choosing you because you are my friend, this week I would like a learning partner to help keep me focussed as I had a difficult week this week’. We still intervened when the children needed our help and steered them to make the best decisions when selecting their tasks.
decided that enough was enough. The Year Five team all agreed we wanted to change these mind sets. Children would just be children, and we would have NO ABILITY GROUPS for anything, in our world we would create everyone would be equal, and capable of great things. This idea sounded easy enough to implement… until we began teaching.
What are the key features? Firstly, we paired the children randomly with a learning partner for the week instead of sitting them in their usual ability groups. Numeracy lesson number one - now the children are not in groups how do we differentiate? They can’t all do the same task surely? Ok, simple, we let them choose the task after explaining all three, this was called ‘Choice and Challenge’. Do we tell them which one is the hardest? What do we call the different tasks? How many sheets will we need to photocopy? Where will I put the TA? Will they just choose the easiest task? Do we stop them if we feel they’ve chosen the wrong ones? Will they always challenge themselves? All great questions we had to consider. All of which caused us great concern and many sleepless nights. Many times we very nearly ‘threw in the towel’, we worried, would the children finish the year having made the right amount of progress? We were also surprised at the initial resistance, to this equal playing field we had created, from the ‘more able’ groups of learners. The more lessons we taught that week, the
more we realised what we wanted to achieve would have great benefits; equally barriers kept
September 2015
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rearing their ugly heads. How on Earth would we tackle that ‘carousel’ Guided Reading has become when they all read at different ‘levels’? What if the random learning partnership was a ‘bad’ pairing? Each obstacle, when we tackled it, had exciting bi-products. So when you ask us what were the key features it is a hard question to have a single response for. In the end, we didn’t just get rid of ability groups. We ended up making a whole variety of adjustments to our classroom environment to make them truly ‘Learn without Limits’. We adopted weekly Learning Partners; introduced ‘Choice and Challenge’ to them; we taught them how to respond to good feedback and use compliments books; we had a no hands
How do we ensure they work to the ability they are capable of? We usually carried out ‘cold’ tasks (carried out on blue paper) in Literacy and Numeracy where the children had the chance to show us how much they can do towards an objective. The children would then reflect on their success and the teacher would keep a record of who needs more practise. Planning would be adjusted to direct teaching where necessary and because we were aware of each individual’s capabilities we were able to direct them to the best choice for each task if we felt they weren’t working at the level they should be. At the end of the unit we would give them a ‘hot’ task (on yellow paper) that showed their new learning. When comparing his to the cold task it was a great method for showing progress. They key was to get the children to evaluate their progress and to let them be in control of their learning and adjust tasks
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