"A precocious child," Miss Honey said, "is one that shows amazing intelligence early on. You are an unbelievably precocious child.”
"Am I really?" Matilda asked. 

Adaptive teaching is usually discussed as a responsive approach to teaching students who routinely struggle. It describes how teachers can anticipate, assess and adapt, so that all students access the curriculum. 

However, the more you consider the diversity of classrooms, the more you consider adaptive teaching can also help focus on stretching students who can find learning easy, or who get bored by a task that isn’t challenging for them.

Stretching and challenging Matilda

A focus on ‘gifted and talented’ has largely faded into the background of national policy. Understandably, there is a greater focus on inclusion, pupils with SEND and those from disadvantaged backgrounds. 

Perhaps the implicit assumption is that children like Matilda, who prove precocious and academic throughout their education, are going to be just fine. In the race that is school success, they are speedy and seemingly have all the natural tools to win. 

But when you consider the children that sit in a primary school class, like Matilda, or students in a GCSE maths class, they have their own needs and challenges that we should seek to meet. 

Too often, for high prior attaining students, the default can be to give them additional tasks. If we are not careful, keeping highly capable students busy becomes a proxy for stretch and challenge when it isn’t. It smacks of some of the old approaches to differentiation, when we give an extension task with a couple more questions, but the bulk of the lesson isn’t challenging or stretching all students. 

“Adaptive teaching is less likely to be valuable if it causes the teacher to artificially create distinct tasks for different groups of pupils or to set lower expectations for particular pupils.” 

Early Career Framework, Standard 5 – Adapt Teaching

Stretch and challenge should not be deemed an extra task because you finished quickly. Nor should stretch and challenge be rationed out to the few students who are deemed ‘gifted and talented’ based on a test score or two from the previous year.

Adaptive teaching and challenging Matilda (along with everyone else)

Adaptive teaching can include lots of small microadaptations that make children like Matilda think harder, understand more critical reasoning, and exhibit greater independence. 

For instance, for a year 4 teacher who is checking for understanding of the rainforest biome by getting children to answer quiz questions, can ask Matilda for a ‘Just a Minute’ explanation of ‘why rainforests are important for our planet’, along with recall of layers of the rainforest, plants and animals. 

By stretching Matilda and expecting her to verbally reason, we then offer the start of a potentially powerful dialogue with the rest of the class (using the ABC feedback model):

‘Adil, do you Agree with Matilda?’ 

‘Freya – I think you might want to Build upon those threats to the rainforest that Matilda mentioned.’ 

In a year 8 history classroom, you can create a climate whereat students expect to tackle difficult tasks. You can take a school trip to visit a Norman Castle and it can be interesting and fun. But you can ensure it stretches and challenges too. 

I love this example from Richard Kennett of a school trip that is framed by a debatable enquiry question (‘What was the purpose of Norman Castles?’) that combines historical scholarship along with sword buying and castle climbing! Small adaptations, such as answering the enquiry question at the end of the day, can enhance motivation whilst also increasing the degree of challenge. Matilda is likely to love it, but every student, regardless of their starting point, is scaffolded to succeed. 

If a student like Matilda flies through their maths homework at lightning speed, a microadaptation can be to write (or record) a short ‘Debrief’ (see a detailed blog HERE) about the strategy they used, or even devise a problem of their own for peers to solve. Then when students share their strategies, we encourage reflection and the critical reasoning that stretches every student. 

Sometimes students can read more, write more, independently explore topics of interest. But we should consider how small adaptations to every task in the classroom ensures it challenges thinking, not just keeps students busy. We can ensure high prior attainers are not bored, or go unchallenged, as much as we rightly focus on supporting struggling students not to fall behind their peers. 

 

Related reading: See my ‘adaptive teaching’ collection of blogs and links HERE.