1. Stretching our brightest: from able to
remarkable
Who or what am I?
• I hook children in and don’t let them go
• I encourage peer sharing and learning – it’s built in to
me
• I’m so absolutely, gut-wrenchingly compelling that
children rush to YouTube to share learning ideas about
me with others.
• I break just about every rule about learning that you
adults can think of
• I’m successful like JK Rowling is successful
Who or what am I?

2. Minecraft
https://minecraft.net/
What is it about this game which immerses
children?
‘no rules to follow’
‘no one can tell you what you can or cannot do’

4. I’m not here…
• To tell you what to do

5. I am here…
• To share some ideas
• 5 hit singles: Questioning
• 5 album tracks: Feedback
• 5 strategies to use outside
our classrooms
• 5 White albums: ideas I’ve
used
• Love Me Do

6. Shock Horror!
• There is no such thing as Gifted and Talented
provision
• There is no discrete, bombproof set of activities
or procedures which will ensure that your bright
students are stretched and challenged to Ofsted
or ISI criteria
• There is a great deal of commercial pressure to
make you think otherwise…and feel guilty…and
to keep you looking for that Ticket to Ride

7. If not G and T provision, then what?
• Approaches which enable all your students to
Shout to the Top
• Excellent practice for your students in your
school facing the pressures only you
understand as the professional expert
• Pressures overcome by your energy,
determination, professionalism and talent

8. Beatles Theme
From covers band to Tomorrow Never Knows
in 33 months…which is as good an example of
‘gifted and talented’ as you’ll find.

9. Learn to the Top/Shout to the Top
If we get the basic philosophy or framework
right, then it doesn’t matter which learning and
teaching techniques or methods we use (we will
know these better than anyone).

10. What ‘stretch and challenge’ activities
work for your able students?

12. Learning Rollercoaster I

13. Learning Rollercoaster II
• WW1 motif
• What did American
soldiers do in March
1918?
People in the past were
not stupid…

14. Learning Rollercoaster III
• Perhaps we want to ‘put the band in suits’ too often
• Children want to succeed and our G&T students do as well
• Their performances will dip and peak, just as ours did/do
• After a period of climbing or working hard we tend to fall
back – and maybe this is a beneficial cycle ie spacing out
our learning, with frequent retesting on the climbs (a new
skirmish or battle using slightly different methods…

15. How do we ‘learn to the top’?
• Slow down and teach more of less
• Proper lesson time for DIRT (Dedicated
Improvement and Reflection Time)
• Big, open Qs: How do we know this? Why?
Why is this significant? Why is this important?
(not the same)
• Move on but then come back; a culture of
revisiting

16. My lovely Year 9s

17. My lovely Yr 9s
• Co-Construction process:
‘You are professional lesson
observers’
• PGCE-style learning
rollercoaster!
Eventually: skills
acquisition embedded
into content eg
railways/HS2/improved
questioning

18. Learning Rollercoaster I

19. Scholars’ Programme
• c10% of a year group
• Includes Sport, Creative Arts Scholars
• Initially identified via entrance exam,
supplemented by additions from progress reports
• OPEN: some leave, new ones join
• 7-11 are all-rounders; Sixth Formers are Scholars
in one subject
Questions?

20. A Total Philosophy
• See Tom Sherrington’s
blog and pink handout
• http://headguruteacher.c
om/about/
• Ron Berger, An Ethic of
Excellence
• Is this appropriate for
your school?

21. 5 hit singles
Questioning: at the heart of
what we do.
1. ABC Qs
2. Hinge Qs
3. Predictive bingo!
4. Co-Construction. Are we
brave enough?
5. Teacher-led Big Qs:
significance, importance
How do we record this
questioning?
1964 Civil
Rights Act
‘I have a
dream’
Images of
Vietnam
War
Reference
to LBJ
‘No man can
given anyone
his freedom’
Brown v
Board of
Education
References
to Europe
in civil
rights
context
FREE SQUARE
CIVIL RIGHTS
BINGO!

22. 5 album tracks: Feedback: 1:10 ratio?
1. Feedback video diaries (Dale Banham)
2. ‘Dot around’ = slow down and go back
3. Recording oral feedback: stickers and
stampers! In lesson time: essential!
4. Skill sheets/mats in racks or to fit on desks
5. Codes and feedback mats
Your thoughts?

23. 5 strategies to use outside the
classroom
1. Marking is differentiation (David Didau)
2. Communicating home: success in using skills?
3. Exemplars in Dept time: do our meetings stretch
and challenge us?!
4. Revision T shirts: take school home with you
5. Pupil voice with clout: HJS iTribe
http://www.henleaze-
jun.bristol.sch.uk/page?id=134
• Your thoughts?

25. Outside events: bolt-on G&T?
• Julie Arliss G&T events
• AgustaWestland ‘Flight Day’
• University lectures
• Olympiads
• Not in themselves the answer, but can help;
often memorable.

26. 5 White Albums I’ve tried over the past
year or two to help stretch and challenge
1. Model United Nations
2. Cornell note-taking
3. Ron Berger, An Ethic of Excellence: redraft! ‘3
trays’ approach. Rigour.
4. Co-Construction
5. Replace Lesson Objectives with Big Qs - and
answer them
• Your thoughts?

29. 5 staffroom comments
• ‘I know who our G and T children are, thanks’
• ‘I think they can pretty much be left to get on
with it – they’re so nice and so well behaved’
• ‘Some pupils are just smarter than others’
• ‘It’s always the same boys who answer.
They’ve got a talent for making themselves
heard’
• ‘I spent ages marking that Yr 9 work and they
just glanced at the mark…grrr!’

30. Minecraft II
• Do we allow the sandbox, open-world
philosophy to flourish or do we impose mini-
versions of our worlds?
• Andrew Wiles and Fermat’s Last Theorem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FnXgprKg
SE

31. Extension: Comparison
In your groups, discuss reasonably quietly, the
similarities and differences between the situation
during the proposal of the Liverpool-Manchester
railway link and the HS2 railway link today.
Use the fact sheets provided and your text book.

33. 2 challenges for me
• To remember the teachers who inspired me
• ‘Smart is not something you are. It’s
something you get.’

34. A ‘Double A side’ of recommended
reading: I Martin Robinson, Trivium
p225: ‘we teach in order to let go’
A C21st Trivium based on classical/medieval
principles:
• Grammar: building blocks of knowledge
and ideas
• Logic: questioning, analysing, enquiring,
thinking
• Rhetoric: performing, explaining, arguing

35. II Michael Marland, The Craft of the
Classroom (1975!), p1
‘The more you look at schooling in practice, the
more you study research and observation, and
the more you consider the real problems of
helping the young learn, the more you are
forced to the simple conclusion that individual
teachers are the most important factor. It is not
the school organization, the syllabus, or the
teaching method…’

36. Summary: The Fool on the Hill
My advice to myself:
Less is more. Slow learning works
Co-Construction works
Big Qs work
Care over feedback works
Relentlessly high expectations and Berger-
esque redrafting and critique works
Learning is a rollercoaster

37. From able to remarkable,
Love Me Do to Day in the Life
I must give them the means: the sandbox
(Minecraft), the swings, roundabouts and the
rollercoaster
Some of this playing/learning will be uphill and
tough. Good.
My knowledge of my students is key: local rec
not Alton Towers
All my students have the potential to be
G&T/Scholars, and remarkable but some
activities/approaches allow this more than others

38. Pedagogy, ideas, practical tips, theory
Martin Robinson @SurrealAnarchy Trivium
Michael Marland, The Craft of the Classroom –
1975, but still spot-on!
Doug Lemov, Teach Like a Champion
Ross Morrison McGill @TeacherToolkit
Alex Quigley: @HuntingEnglish
Tom Sherrington: @headguruteacher
David Didau: @LearningSpy