My child was streamed and instantly their friendship groups were decimated. Year 1, the start of their education journey. Those friendships were to be dissolved. Those friendships supported by family walks in lockdown socially distancing to keep them all chatting, those friendships, gone. It instantly made me question was this right for my child? They were going to be taught in a class where less differentiation would be needed, all the teachers are lovely, the classrooms are similar, my child was going to be appropriately stretched. Surely I was happy with this as an educator?
It was actually after the kids were in bed when my husband turned to me and said he was devastated that those friendships were to be dissolved. I put a brave face on and said they can still play at break time, only to realise that they were to join a new COVID bubble and there would be no mixing. Was it just the friendships I was concerned about? Yes but they are not just friendships at this age. They are one of the corners of what we are trying to build in our children's education, it is a vital part of educating the whole child.
This is lifted straight from the Phse guidance by the government, updated within the last 12 months. I'm not wrong then, friendships are a vital part of their education at such a young age. In class they are going to learn the importance of friendships. How confusing will this be that their friends are no longer with them and they are having to start again aged 5?
I began thinking about the differentiation aspect. I have long been a fan of group them together and teach to the majority and sprinkle a bit on for the top and scaffold for the bottom. Hats and mats were the lifeblood of my PGCE! But things have changed. I now teach in FE where even with an effort or nod to streaming the range of ability in groups can be as wide as the grand canyon. So I have learnt to adapt. I have learnt how to personalise learning more. I love a choice board to help with this. I curate appropriate resources for a variety of levels and offer students a choice. I love to sing 'I don't care how you get here just get here if you can' What I mean, when I torture my students ears, is that I aim to empower my learners to choose how and what they learn to arrive at my end point for them in the session.
Technology has moved on. When I started teaching we photocopied 15 mats sheets 5 hats and 10 lats sheets for every session. Prizes for working out hats mats and lats if they are a new term for you! Hats... High attainers... Mats middle attainers... Lats low attainers. Technology has moved on and yes I still photocopy (until gcse maths stops being linear and paper based I have little choice!) but I also offer a choice. Some lessons it may be written on the board, this one is good if you want to practise this skill, try this one if your feeling like this, and so on. Sometimes it will be a piece of paper colour coded with a key. Sometimes it's a Hyperdoc. I create a table and insert links into each cell. I assign it to students and they colour in the cells as they progress.
I was asked today if I change my approach when teaching pre 16 or 16-18s or my approach to teaching 19+ learners. No, I don't. I don't change the content as we are still learning GCSE maths. I may change the levels of differentiation as the younger groups may be more close together in ability but I won't change the activities too much. We have the same level of gamification in my adult learner class as we do in my pre 16 class. We still get sweets for critical thinking answers or descriptions. We are motivated and engaged with a variety of stimulus. You will be surprised how competitive a Quizizz can get with a group of adults! Maths is still hard, it's hard for 14-16s becuase it is a pressurised subject, their whole future depends on this subject along with English (it doesn't but we as a society make them feel like that!) it is hard for 16-18s because they haven't passed it at the right grade already, essentially they believe they have failed it (they haven't (if you had failed maths you would gave got a U, getting a 3 is not a fail!!!) but we as a society make them feel like that!) it's hard for 19+ learners as they can't do something or move onto something in their journey to higher education or career progression because they don't have that magic pass at grade 4 in maths.
Although the lessons are very similar between the age groups my choice boards are harder for my adult learners. They have an overwhelming desire to answer every question! Admirable, but I have long lost the notion that you practise the skill once mastered for the rest of the lesson. I am a big fan of interlaved practise. Learn the skill, master the skill, have a bit of a practise and learn a new skill, practise all the old skills and then we learn another one. My adults though, master the skill and want question after question on the same skill. It is a battle to say, practise in your own time, maximise your time with me, let's push on.
I demonstrated choice boards in a staff CPD session recently. I honestly didn't give them a secing thought. They are my natural way of doing things now but I was enlightened by the experience. Just because we use something all the time doesn't mean it isn't t new to someone else! I was inundated with requests for my 'template'... My template! Ha! My template was a 3 x 3 table inserted into a Google doc. In each cell I typed, lesson slides, task 1 etc and hyperlinked them to the resource. I was amazed how many people wanted the 'template'. I asked one teacher why was she so keen, she said she would never have thought to colour code the cells as they moved on and has never given adult learners a choice before because they always want more questions of the same skill to practice. My template had inspired her to find a solution to the same problems I have experienced.
Technology has enabled me to bridge the differentiation gap in my maths classroom. I am able to enthuse and inspire learners with all sorts of new ideas. I can now say that I don't feel the need to stream my students as much. Clearly I can't differentiateacross the whole grades 1-9 and have a grade 1 learner sat with a grade 9 learner. Can I? It would be possible I think but it would be exhausting in terms of my level of planning! I currently differentiate scross grade 2 learners to grade 5 which is a wide range! I'm OK with this range though and curate resources to support all of my learners. I can plan for a wider range of abilities using something as simple as a choice board. I can build that interleaved practise with something as simple as a retrieval grid. I have the tools to enable me to plan and share with ease. I love to do a screen cast when I am planning to orate my thought process. I share it with staff I am mentoring and they find it useful to understand my rationale. I also like to do it for my students. I've picked this task here because when the question comes on the exam it is worded like this... I definitely wouldn't attempt this unless I felt that I had mastered this task first. You get the idea.Technology enables me to do this.
Last year in my adult gcse class you would have regularly seen 2 or 3 learners sat with headphones on staring at their phones mid way through my lesson. I was very much a no phones allowed teacher when I started, I had a phone prison box too! But things move on, technology has moved on. My learners weren't watching Tik Tok, they were watching a play list I had made on YouTube of the 3 different ways to tackle the type of problem solving exam question we were looking at in class. Or they were editing maths in Equatio mobile ready to submit on Google Classroom. Or they may have actually been been on TikTok watching a cute maths hook on problem solving! The fact I don't need to book a laptop trolley 3 weeks in advance and all of this can be done on a phone enables me to give my learners more choice. Technology has enabled this choice.
I was discussing this blog post as I wrote it with the brilliant and amazing Iain from Driving Digital. @iainthomp. He made some valid points on streaming and setting, the guy is a legend! He said he didn't get it as a concept! He teaches sport so less prescribed between grades, maybe? He then applied to a work context. If you were to be grouped at work for a task would you group all the underoerforming staff together? Nope! You would need some stronger staff to make sure the tasks got done. He has a point! Socially, do you surround yourself with people who all think the same as you and whom all have the same educational backgrounds? Nope! Some people might but I hope they are in the minority and society is more inclusive! You have a mix of friends through experiences you had (yes some might be from uni etc but they will be part of a wider mix) Are we passing on biases to our students by streaming? Does it create or support a belief that society is better fragmented and apart based on certain criteria?
I'm not sure I think streaming is right anymore. I'm not sure it is aligned to the ethos of fair education for all that I am striving to deliver. Because I can give my learners more choice, through the opportunities technology has created, I can't see the need anymore to stream as definitively and decisively as I have pushed for previously. Things just move on, if a business didn't reflect and adopt it would fail. Education cannot fail. SJ
