Personalising Challenge for Pupils Working at Greater Depth

When deciding how to meet the needs of pupils who you consider to be working at greater depth, there are several avenues to take.

I've written already of how you might give them certain kinds of task, and about how it's not just about the tasks you give pupils. I've also written about some general principles of challenge and about how to make sure you are challenging all pupils, not just the ones you've assessed as working at greater depth.

6 Ways To Challenge Pupils Working At Greater Depth

In my blog post entitled 'Greater Depth: General Principles Of Challenge For Higher Prior Attaining Pupils' I proposed the following 6 ways for how teachers might go about challenging pupils who they believe to be working at greater depth in any given subject.

1. More (and More Complex) Knowledge

2. Provide Opportunities For Children To Demonstrate And Do Something With Their Knowledge

3. Teach Masterclasses

4. Remove Scaffolds and Support To Encourage Independence

5. Communicate High Expectations

6. Personalise The Challenge

Challenging Pupils Who Are Working at Greater Depth by Personalising the Challenge

Although I still think the above are all good ways to think about challenge, it is the last point that I have gravitated more and more as I have worked with schools on this: personalise the challenge.

In that blog post I summarised personalising the challenge like this:

"Personalisation can come as a result of assessment - we find out that they know something or can do something already, and adjust their future learning accordingly. But personalisation could be more than this. We could take into account their interests, strengths and weaknesses, personality traits and so on. In order to engage them and encourage them to produce something excellent we might tap into their hobbies and interests. Conversely, in order to challenge them and to encourage them out of their comfort zone, we might not allow children, for example, to write yet another story if they are already demonstrating excellence in this area. In this case the child might be challenged to produce a piece of written work within another genre that they are less comfortable with.

Often, children who are working at greater depth will know what they find easy (and often what they find boring as a result) so it may be worth consulting the child about this in order to determine ways of working that might challenge the child. Sometimes a child might have ideas about how they want to challenge themselves which could be tapped into in classroom work."

Having done more work and thinking in this area, I'd like to bring in something else I've shared.

Identifying the Personality Traits or Characteristics of Pupils Working at Greater Depth

In my blog post 'Assessment: How Can I Identify Greater Depth Children In Foundation Subjects?' (I've also written about why we should identify children working at greater depth, if you need convincing) I shared some some general, non-subject specific characteristics of pupils working at greater depth which I adapted from Todd Kettler's 'Critical Thinking Skills Among Elementary School Students: Comparing Identified Gifted and General Education Student Performance':

• Greater processing speed for both simple and complex tasks;

• More thorough problem solving using a wider array of strategies;

• Using more metacognitive strategies;

• Sustaining attention;

• Employing superior memory and more efficient retrieval processes;

• Advanced abstracting and generalising;

• Learning with less direct teaching.

The purpose of sharing that list was as a basis for recognising pupils who might be working at greater depth.

In a recent article for Teach Primary Magazine, I shared a list of potential characteristics of pupils who might have the potential to work at greater depth. These kinds of traits can also be used to identify pupils who are working at greater depth when linked to successful meeting of age-related expectations:

• Is ambitious

• Possesses a belief that they will succeed

• Displays high levels of effort

• Has a hunger for learning

• Appears to learn at a quicker pace

• Is willing to learn from mistakes

• Shows resilience when things are hard

• Always goes the extra mile

• Demonstrates attention to detail

• Seems to have an inherent ability

• Holds a long-term view of achievement

• Is creative and innovative

• Possesses a problem-solving mindset

I've developed similar lists of character traits with other schools I've worked with too.

Identifying Personality Traits or Characteristics to Develop in Pupils Working at Greater Depth

And its in the identification of such character traits that I think we can base the best kind of personalised challenge.

Take either of the above lists and imagine a child who you know is most probably working at greater depth in a certain subject. It is highly unlikely that they will exhibit every single one of those traits - a child could be working at greater depth in a primary foundation subject without ticking all those boxes.

And often, when dealing with primary-aged pupils, even those who are clearly working at greater depth by whatever metric are not eh finished article, the perfect specimen. We all have things we can develop, things we can improve on, things we can get better at.

And that's where the character traits can come in handy again. They can be used as a guide for teachers to set next steps for those pupils.

For example, a child might show resilience when things are hard, always go the extra mile and demonstrate attention to detail but they might not yet be willing to learn from their mistakes, and might hold themselves to high standards in such a way that impacts them negatively. Here we have a clear way to begin to challenge the child - an obvious next step for them which will require a bespoke approach to teaching them.

Developing Character Traits in Pupils Working at Greater Depth as a Means of Challenge

Remember, it might be the case that a child only displays some of the above characteristics when working in a particular subject. If that is the case, then you will being by only challenging them to develop further characteristics of a pupil working at greater depth in that one subject. In other subects they may not have the same levels of confidence, interest, motivation, and so on.

The alternative to that is to challenge them to transfer some of the characteristics they display in one subject into another. For example, if a child uses exceptional metacogntive strategies in history, could they begin to translate those strategies into their approach to maths?

Next Steps for Developing Character Traits in Pupils Working at Greater Depth as a Means of Challenge

Exactly how you might go about helping pupils to develop certain of these character traits in particular subjects will, for now, have to be the content of other blog posts in the future. Indeed, such an individualised approach calls for many different solutions which are probably best devised by teachers who know the pupil well, but who have also done some reading and thinking about how their needs can best be met. What I propose probably isn't simple to achieve, but could very well be the start of teachers making a real difference to pupils who are working at greater depth.

Making impactful change in your school can be overwhelming. I know - I've been there myself and have guided many other school leaders through the process. I can help you to build the enriching experience you want for your pupils.

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1. Drop me an email

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3. We'll work together to empower you and your staff to enhance teaching and to enrich your pupils' lives

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