If We’re Preparing Children for Careers in an Unknown Future, Then We Need to Help Them Think Wider, Bigger and Deeper
“Why do we reject the most original and successful methods of learning in favour of producing written evidence to prove we have taught something?”
- by Julie Watson
It was a pretty ordinary history lesson in my second year of teaching. It was only the second time I was ‘doing’ the Romans with my Y3 class (this was in the early noughties) but I was already adapting my approach.
This class had shown a particular interest in the eruption of Vesuvius and while it was not strictly speaking one of the old ‘QCA’ approved outcomes, I’d managed to find a great big book (yes – I’m that old, no clever technology for us back then) that could support the children’s writing, while discussing the facts they were so eager to explore.
I was in mid-flow when a hand went up and a child asked, “‘So what came before the Big Bang then?”
You could have heard a pin drop. The cartoon timeline depicting key eras in our past had clearly been a more interesting distraction than my slightly crumpled and faded book.
Silence. Awe. Thirty eager brains were ticking away on probably the biggest question ever asked by anyone, and here we were, on a dreary November morning, in deepest Yorkshire. I paused – how to begin? “What do you think?” I replied.
Hands shot up. There were more questions, ideas, references to Star Wars and some theological statements too.
An intense class discussion began and I knew then that I had found my real vocation. It is a moment that has stayed with me in my 20 years of teaching since, influencing my learning and teaching pedagogies to this day.
Ludicrous evidence
I often ask teachers to question how the timeline of teaching has developed and why we follow certain practices in education.
Learning is what we as a species have always done and has enabled us to thrive. We have surpassed all others by developing new skills through application, trial and error, a real purpose and a need to succeed.
Stone age man, I am assured, did not perfect the art of creating tools by writing five sentences on how to use an axe. Neither did the Egyptians’ understanding of how to build pyramids increase because someone lectured them about it.
So why do we reject the most original and successful methods of learning in favour of producing written evidence to prove we have taught something?
When securing children’s understanding of key structures, systems, rules or concepts, learning is no longer, unfortunately, our central focus. Evidence takes priority over learning and when phrased like that, it begins to sound quite ludicrous.
When training teachers, I am no longer stunned by the amount of colleagues who confess to not giving their children a real purpose for writing. Without a clear audience, why would anyone have a desire to write?
A foundation stage teacher recently bemoaned the fact that although she had taught her class how to write a list, ‘They just won’t go in the role-play area and write one!’ Well, why would you?
Seeing the light
That pupil asking about the big bang was developing deeper understanding by questioning his position in the development of the entire universe (even Brian Cox can’t get deeper than that!).
Unwittingly, he caused me to move mountains of my own in terms of my conceptual understanding of what teaching is, and how children learn.
From a lesson that was going to involve simply naming the parts of a Roman central heating system or sewing a Roman amulet, we had shot up Bloom’s Taxonomy. I can pinpoint this as the era in my career when I ‘saw the light’.
From then on, in all seasons and weathers, we went hunting for worms for our wormery; released flies we had hatched; buried a time capsule; enjoyed books in the sunshine; experimented with capacity; stood outside in the autumn rain.
It sounds like something from Enid Blyton, I know.
We sustained shared conversations and laughter; there was a sense of community, awe and wonder. We returned to the classroom with a sense of successful, deep learning. Mastery? Well, yes.
These were experiences that enabled children to question and understand concepts; to see, feel, think, repeat, challenge, reiterate, articulate, learn and apply. And there wasn’t a pencil in sight.
Thinking skills
The mastery model that we now shape all our teaching around requires just that – real learning, real discussion, real artefacts, real issues, real purpose. And it is around this that my discussions with teachers are centred on a daily basis.
Learning has to be based on experiences. Children have to start learning from what they know. We have evolved as a species because we have adapted to change, and that is what we as a profession must do now.
After all, we are preparing our current foundation stage pupils for jobs that will no longer exist. We are preparing them to carry out jobs that have not been created yet.
The key skills children require now are centred around learning to learn, understanding themselves as learners and developing strategies to support that learning, whatever the challenge, pressure or outcome.
I propose that we take a lesson from that Y3 child and encourage our pupils to think wider, bigger, deeper, further.
It’s only through supporting our children with their thinking skills that we can prepare them for the unknown.
We may not be able to tell them what the world will be like in in 10, 20 or 30 years time, but we need to send them into the world of work with the knowledge they can succeed, not with pages of writing in books that went in the bin long ago. That is not what learning or mastery is.
How to make mastery happen
- Ensure children have clear conceptual understanding at the beginning of every new element of learning. What does it relate to? How will children have experienced it before? What are you actually learning to do?
- Children require cognitive challenge to make memorable learning experiences. Open ended questions allow children at all levels of ability to make discoveries at their own pace. This can be supported by collaboration along the way.
- SOLO Taxonomy (Biggs & Collis) enables children to see where their learning is and how to make it deeper. This can be a very visual way of sharing mastery with children.
- Bloom’s Taxonomy can support you in identifying where the task or activity you are setting fits in terms of challenge and higher level thinking skills. It provides a structure for moving on children’s thinking and provides ideas on how appropriate challenges can be set.
- Inspire your children – use their interests as the basis of the learning. Teachers in Foundation Stage have for a long time been focused on the interests of the child. We seem to have forgotten how to do this in KS2.
Julie Watson is an experienced primary education specialist and school improvement partner for TT Education. Find out more at tteducation.co.uk and on Twitter at @tt_education.
