I was chatting to a friend today about teachers. She is not a teacher and she’s about 30, so she is well in the bracket of people I could have taught. I was telling her about my day leading T&L inset for the new term and focusing on asking really good questions to check for understanding, and I mentioned how I thought it was connected to, 15 years ago, Ofsted’s apparent desire for mini-plenaries.

‘Oh yes!’ she said, ‘I remember them. And all – most – some on the board….that’s just stupid because nobody was every going to do more than they need to.’

Well, precisely, Nicky, and this was the argument that was eventually made against it. It has fallen far from favour now; but I’m not convinced it isn’t still there.

Having this discussion at the same time as sharing how difficult it can be to moving teacher practice on clicked something in my brain, though. We are extremely wedded to what we believe is effective in the classroom and it can be very hard to shift entrenched practice – I think this is because we still don’t have masses of proof of what is effective in the classroom, though we know more all the time about what isn’t.

So, if you were teaching in the era of all/most/some, perhaps it is entrenched in your brain that, even though we don’t write ‘differentiation by outcome’ objectives anymore, the pattern of learning is going to be the same. We go in thinking that not all students are going to achieve the most challenging objectives we set, because that is what we used to plan for; that is what happens in most lessons, without intervention; that is what happens when they sit exams. It becomes not possible to think of any other outcome being possible. Something in here about the soft bigotry of low expectations; suddenly teachers telling me, ‘My students would never manage that reading’ makes sense.

If you look back in my blog far enough you’ll see that I was, and remain, an advocate for top-down planning, where you plan your lessons for your very top end and then scaffold the rest to meet the same outcome. All will achieve this. Most will need some help. Some will need more help than others. (I can’t manage this all the time. Most of the time I try. Sometimes I succeed.)

I had a conversation with someone last year about top down planning. It became frustrating for both of us. I could not explain myself clearly enough; she could not conceive of a classroom where the top students would not need extension work. At the time I chalked it up to poor communication, but now I wonder – did all/most/some wire our brains in a way we haven’t really realised? Is there a vestige of this left in how we plan, even without us realising – that there will always be a need to pitch lessons somewhere in the middle and add more for the top, because we are not capable of scaffolding the learning, or the ‘some’ won’t be able to meet a challenge?

I don’t think it is so radical to aim for all students to achieve the same outcome in a lesson, even if some need more help. GCSEs – yes. Of course. It’s a system designed to place students in categories. But our individual lessons, even our schemes of work, are not. Let the assessment categorise; make the learning for everyone.

Anyway, I’ve got loads to do so of course the mood for blogging took me. I just wanted to note it down while it was fresh in my mind, so I haven’t thought about it much.