Theory

Pupils learn at different rates

One of the greatest joys of teaching is getting to know your pupils and what makes them unique. These differences will range from their levels of motivation, attitudes towards school and learning to more fixed variables such as their ethnicity or gender. Some of these factors you can influence, and some of them are outside of your control.

Some of these differences and personality traits will affect pupil learning and success in the classroom. For example, a particularly shy pupil may find it difficult to participate in groupwork and will not be forthcoming to let you know when they are struggling with something. Knowing that this pupil is shy means that you can make a particular effort to check on them during tasks. Pupils who have low levels of intrinsic motivation might need support in the form of encouragement to help them develop this trait.

Good teaching has the potential to lead to good results for most pupils providing they also put in the effort. It is worth remembering that there are factors which may make a difference to how pupils learn, e.g. particular Special Educational Needs such as:

• Communication and interaction.
• Cognition and learning.
• Behaviour, emotional and social development.
• Sensory and/or physical.

(Davis et al., 2004)

Of course, teachers can certainly impact positively on pupils with special educational needs but there may be particular barriers to learning which affect their ability to make progress. In Block 6 you will spend more time working with your SENCO to understand these barriers.

As a consequence of this array of differences, pupils are likely to learn at different rates and require different levels and types of support from teachers to succeed. Pupils need to be treated as individuals and a certain level of personalisation to their education is likely to be beneficial. Your task as a teacher is to work out how to do this in a way which is optimal in terms of pupil learning within the realities of teaching 30 pupils in each class.

Seeking to understand pupils’ differences, including their different levels of prior knowledge and potential barriers to learning, is an essential part of teaching

Understanding pupil differences is fundamental to good teaching. There are a number of ways to go about doing this:

• Your school will hold information on all its pupils. There is much useful information that can be gathered to inform your approach for each pupil. There will be data on previous performance, attendance, punctuality and so on. This can help you build a picture of your pupils but be aware of its limitations as the data does not tell you why.
• Whilst this information is useful, it is very important to not build preconceived ideas of what a pupil will be like. It is important to retain high expectations of all pupils.
• There will be colleagues in the school who know these pupils very well and understand what their barriers to learning might be. These colleagues can be a useful place to find information. In primary, talking to the teacher who taught your class the previous year will be an important part of the handover process, but you should feel that you can continue to ask more experienced colleagues for advice throughout the year. In secondary, it is likely that your school has a “tutor” system. Often the tutor or head of year/phase will know a lot about a pupil.
• Understanding levels of prior knowledge can be sought through speaking to pupils’ previous teachers and looking at their test scores from the previous year. You will also have a role to play lesson by lesson in understanding levels of prior knowledge by using formative assessment. You will learn more about this in Block 5 on questioning, assessment and feedback.

Understanding pupil differences

Watch this video of a teacher talking about how he goes about understanding what the differences are between his pupils.

What are the practical strategies the teacher uses? How does it inform his approach?

Video transcript

Before I meet my new class, I go through the data available from the previous teacher. This tells me some information, such as who used to arrive late every day or who has an EHC plan in place. I like to talk to the teacher if possible, as well to get their take on the class, and if there was a teaching assistant who worked in the classroom last year they usually have some great information. If I know before the end of the year which class I am taking, I find it really helpful to look at samples of their work from the end of the year. This shows me what they could do and where there may be gaps in their prior knowledge.

When I plan for the first day I always start by saying that whoever they were last year doesn’t matter to me. If they were the pupil who got the most behaviour points, I don’t care, because this is a fresh start. I like to create a space where pupils can choose to be the best versions of themselves and what better than a new teacher and new class. Through the first half term I plan lots of activities which are “class bonding” but are really designed for me to get a better understanding of who they are and how they work. For example, we do an afternoon of problem-solving activities which is really fun but I am actually observing their communication, reasoning, literacy and maths skills so I can decide which groups to organise pupils into for our first topic.

Adapting teaching in a responsive way, including by providing targeted support to pupils who are struggling, is likely to increase pupil success

Watch the following video. You will notice that the pupils have all been given the same task. This is not because the pupils are of the same ability. Carefully consider the actions of the teacher. Bring your notes to Mentor Session 6 where you will discuss them.

Video

Title

Assertive monitoring

Video type

Classroom practice

Short description

The pupils have all been given the same task. This is not because the pupils are of the same ability.

What should you focus on in this video?

• What is the teacher doing in the lesson to maximise each pupil’s progress during their independent practice?
• What did the teacher need to think about or prepare before the lesson in order to do this?
• What happens when the teacher notices that a pupil is struggling?
• What is the impact of the strategy?

Video script

The teacher starts by giving an explanation of the task that the pupils are going to do. All pupils have the same task. It is not obvious from the video what the range of ability is within the classroom. The teacher lets the class know how many minutes they have to complete the task.

She then sets the class off on the task.

Immediately she begins to circulate the pupils. She checks on individual pupils by looking over their shoulder at what they are doing. She offers short prompts and interventions where necessary. She narrates out loud what she is doing to the whole class and then targets additional support at specific pupils.

“I am coming round now checking on… I will tick it if correct, I’ll put a dot if it’s not.”

Teacher circulates the class and goes to one table at the front:

“Is everyone happy with the task? Any questions?” No. Teacher ticks or dots their work.

To the whole class:

“I am now coming round checking X part of your work...”

Teacher approaches an individual pupil and reads their work.

(Quietly) “This is excellent Rahim, just fix this part…”

You will have the opportunity to practise this technique in Activity 3.5.

Adaptive teaching is less likely to be valuable if it causes the teacher to artificially create distinct tasks for different groups of pupils or to set lower expectations for particular pupils

Until quite recently the prevailing trend was to create distinct tasks for different groups of pupils within the classroom as a differentiation technique, e.g. the teacher producing multiple versions of the same worksheet. Not only did this approach affect teacher workload, activities of this kind can place limits on pupil achievement.

Other popular differentiation strategies were to differentiate by time and differentiate by outcome.

With these strategies, teachers had different expectations of what pupils could complete in the allocated time and to what standard. A consequence of this was a lowering of expectations of what pupils could and should achieve.

Your approach should be to have high expectations of every child, looking for ways to support each of them step by step to achieve the learning objectives.

There is a common misconception that pupils have distinct and identifiable learning styles. This is not supported by evidence and attempting to tailor lessons to learning styles is unlikely to be beneficial

Learning styles theory was popular in education for some time with many people believing that individuals had a preferred learning style (e.g. auditory, visual, kinesthetic) and that pupils would learn better if taught in that predominant style. This is not supported by any credible evidence (Willingham, 2010) and attempting to tailor lessons to learning styles is unlikely to be beneficial.

What is true is that learners are different from each other, and that these differences can affect their performance.

In claiming that learning styles do not exist, we are not saying that all learners are the same. Rather, we assert that a certain number of dimensions (ability, background knowledge, interest) vary from person to person and are known to affect learning. The emphasis on learning styles, we think, often comes at the cost of attention to these other important dimensions (Willingham, 2010).

Things to watch out for:

• Being told that a pupil “learns best kinesthetically” and therefore should be allowed to wander around the classroom when they feel like it. There is very little evidence of successful interventions based on learning styles theory. (Willingham 2004)
• Activities which claim to exercise pupils’ multiple intelligences, such as getting pupils to sing and dance when reciting times tables. Gardner (1995) describes such use of multiple intelligences as trivial. This is trivial because pupils are not really engaged in the thing they need to think hard about.
• A colleague gives you advice to prepare three different versions of the same worked example, one which uses pictures, one which uses words and one which includes a video recording of yourself completing it so pupils have “choice” about how to study. Do not spend your time creating these resources ‒ one quality resource (e.g. talking pupils through a written example) will be better.