Adapting teaching, increasing participation, improving literacy
Three sessions that have got members talking
You can have the best curriculum in the world but if you don’t adapt your teaching, maximise participation or ensure students have the literacy skills to access it, it won’t have the impact you hoped for.
This week, we’ve got three pieces that will a) help you avoid those traps and b) ensure you don’t miss out on the conversations others are having about them inside Curriculum Thinking Week.
But before we get into them… a quick word on the magic of (and difficulties with) helping subject specialists share ideas at a conference.
One of the best things about it is watching complete strangers, from different ends of the country strike up conversations, which lead them to “aha!” moments.
One of the hardest things is knowing that some people watch a session and don’t let speakers know what they think. Speakers go to great lengths to share their work. They deserve all the recognition they receive.
If you’ve commented on a session inside Curriculum Thinking Week 2025, thank you! We see you. Know that you have made a speaker’s day. We hope it leads you to new successes.
If you haven’t yet commented on a session you enjoyed, do go back to let the speaker know what you took from them. Striking up that conversation could be the start of a career changing relationship.
Our subject specialist speakers are wonderful, generous people. Get to know their names and faces below. Get chatting to them under their sessions here.
🧩 How to be a truly adaptive teacher
A single point made very well can change how you see a topic.
Here’s how Amjad Ali (Trust Training and Inclusion Lead, Chiltern Learning Trust) frames adaptive teaching:
Chunk and sequence, break down the task, check in with student, do not shout.
Those are strategies that are not just explicitly for SEND students. They are beneficial to all.
So I don't feel that we need to write those in pupil profiles or passports, because if we're truly adaptive, we're doing things that are absolutely efficient and effective for everyone. So, for example, and rather obtusely….
I've never met an autistic child and then had a non-autistic child that's come up to me and said to me, “Sir, you know, I'm not autistic, right? So I don't mind sensory overload and chaos in a classroom”.
I've never met a child without ADHD that's ever turned around and said to me, “Sir, Mr. Ali, I don't have ADHD. So I don't mind sitting still 60 minutes non-stop just listening to you talk without any movement whatsoever. I don't have ADHD
I've never met a non dyslexic child or adult that's ever turned around. Said to me, “Mr. Ali, Sir, I don't have dyslexia. So I don't mind illegible, disorganised slides”.
So you get my point, right? What is needed explicitly for some actually benefits all.
Here’s what others thought:
📈 Driving 100% participation with oracy
What percentage of your students participate in lessons? And of those students how deep is their engagement? And what impact is it having on their learning?
Here’s how Gavin Weir (Assistant Principal - Teaching and Learning at Kings Academy Ringmer) thinks about participation:
I wanted a clear model that gave staff a way of conceptualising what I wanted to see within the school. That was memorable. And it was also simple as well. So it was a simple whole school strategy for how we can think about participation.
I took a mathematical perception of this taken from Doug Lemov. So there being two spectra.
So on one axis we have participation. That's the percentage of students that are thinking at any given time throughout the lesson.
And then on the y axis we have the thinking ratio. So what proportion of students are thinking about something which is cognitively demanding?
So at the top you would have the most cognitively demanding and zero [at the bottom] would be student not really thinking about anything at all.
We end up with these 4 or 5 of quadrants:
The first quadrant is, is what I refer to as “crickets”. You have a number of student “on the bus” But you've got barely any students who are on the bus who are participating. And what they're participating in is low in terms of its cognitive demand. They haven't climbed the cognitive ladder.
We've then got an area above that - “sparse learning” where you have a higher amount of thinking going on, but it's only happening in a small number of students. The fastest, the loudest. They dominate these classrooms.
We've then got a “shallow land” where we have more students participating, but they're really not thinking about anything, which is particularly cognitively challenging.
Then obviously there's the area that we would all want aim to in our classrooms - where we have this sort of “maximal learning” zone, where 100% of the students are thinking and participating in something 100% of the time. There's lots of learning going on. It's cognitively demanding enough to elicit new neural pathways being formed.
But there's this sort of final area as well, which is down here where you have a lot of the class on the bus, but they're not thinking about something which is super challenging outside of their zone of proximal development. And in this place, it's quite an alluring destination. And I think sometimes some classrooms, which seem really buzzy- remember engagement is a bit of a poor proxy for learning. But you go into these classrooms, there's a buzz going on. The students are engaged, but not necessarily in something which is super challenging. And that can be a good place to start. So I call it “base camp”. It's a good place to get to. It's an achievement to get to. But you also want to try and climb the cognitive ladder. It's a temporary destination where you then need to climb up the level of challenge so that all pupils can engage in something which is demanding enough to elicit new neural networks or new neural pathways being formed.
Here’s what others thought:
📚 Literacy Health
What is the greatest human invention of all time?
It’s hard to disagree with Lainy Spinks (Literacy Curriculum Director, Harris Garrard Academy) when she says, “it’s literacy, of course!”
In her session she shares practical strategies that have improved reading, oracy and writing and helped them secure very impressive P8 scores at the school.
Here are 6 about writing”
Live marking - if you have picked a student up on an inaccuracy - this mistake should cease to be made.
Know your students’ best work and writing capability. Hold them to their own standards and model how to improve.
Every lesson should have time for application.
Ensure pre-reading feeds into supporting complex writing tasks.
Provide your students with quality examples of what they are expected to achieve.
Provide an audience and purpose to write. Students should have opportunities to share their work and have the tools on how to provide valuable feedback to each other.
Here’s what others thought:
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