How can I cater for the needs of my Able, Gifted and Talented students more effectively?

Assignment Two Student Number: 580002884

How can I cater for the needs of my Able, Gifted and

Talented students more effectively?

Introduction

1

Literature Review

2

Action Research

5

Data Collection

5

Recommendation 1: “More ICT”

6

Recommendation 2: “More emphasis on cultural aspects”

7

Recommendation 3: “More grammar”

8

Recommendation 4: “Pupil presentation in front of class” & “more

small group work” 9

Recommendation 5: “More thorough learning and practice of vocabulary”

10

Recommendation 6: “More freedom”

10

Conclusion

11


Bibliography

13

Appendices

1. Cummins’ BICS/CALP matrix

15

2. Questionnaire

17

3. Placement school’s attainment data

19

4a-c: “More ICT”

21

5a-d: “More emphasis on cultural aspects”

27

6a-j: “More grammar”

39

7a-c: “Pupil presentation in front of class” and “more small group

work” 57

8a-c: “More thorough learning and practice of vocabulary”

67

9a-c: “More freedom”

73

How can I cater for the needs of my Able, Gifted and Talented

students more effectively?

Introduction


I have chosen the topic of Differentiation for this assignment, and in

particular, catering for the needs of Able, Gifted and Talented (AG&T)

students in my classroom. I will structure the research as follows: firstly,

I will explain the reasons why I chose this topic, in addition to describing

this area of research to express which questions I would like to pose and

answer using theoretical and action research. Secondly, I intend to consult

literature based on AG&T and Modern Foreign Language (MFL) instruction which

I will then compare with my own findings through action research that I

completed during my time at school. Finally, I will analyse my observations

and results and come to a conclusion as to how I can more effectively cater

for their needs.

Differentiation is an omnipresent part of modern education, with

teachers having to cater for each student’s individual needs as an

expectation of the National Curriculum. As trainee teachers, we are highly

attuned to the fact that we need to differentiate our lessons and activities

for our lesser able and DSEN students. However, with regards to students at

the other side of the spectrum, aside from extension tasks, what else could

one do to efficiently cater for their individual needs?

This research is being carried out in a mixed state secondary academy

in the southwest of England. Suffering from a ‘grammar school effect’, the

school is currently ranked 14th out of 18 schools in the area with only 1% of

students achieving the EBacc (BBC 2013). The school provides personalised

learning through ‘Aspire’ programmes, which aim to stretch the top 10% in

class and through enrichment activities. Through interviews with teachers, I

have noted several strategies that they implement to cater for the AG&T. For

example, the MFL Curriculum Leader is also the AG&T Practitioner, who has

allowed for three students in Year 7 to take GCSE French and Spanish due to

their fluency from childhood and they are now extracted from their second

language lesson once a week to have a one to one conversation with the

Foreign Language Assistant in their fluent language. She has, however, not

allowed them to accelerate to study for A Level, given that the choice of


topics to study, such as drugs and immigration, is not appropriate for a

twelve year old student. Also, the academy has now decided to change to a

two year KS3 period, allowing students to choose their GCSEs in Year 8,

ready for more focused learning one year early. Therefore, there is a lot of

extra-curricular support for AG&T students.

I came to realise quickly that select students in my top set classes

were very able in MFL and that my lessons will need to be modified to

accommodate their ability. Upon observing leading practitioners and their

methods of providing extension tasks, I understood that it is important not

to give them more of the same, yet I had not seen any innovative or

exemplary teaching skills within the lessons. Despite almost a textbook

approach to extra-curricular support for AG&T students, support in the

lessons was lacking, which was worrying given that the majority of learning

occurs within the classroom. Therefore, I chose this subject matter not only

in order to augment my professional development as a trainee teacher, but

also to provide my students with the best classroom experience where they

leave the classroom feeling motivated, educated and eager to learn more.

The questions that I will pose at this point comprise of the

following: I would like to explore different methods of teaching and linked

activities to discover the most appropriate approaches for my AG&T students

through carrying out questionnaires and interviews and then experimenting

with my teaching. I would also like to find out if different participation

strategies (for example, individual work versus cooperative learning in

pairs or groups) play a factor in an AG&T student’s progress.

Given the short period of time given to complete this study, I will

solely focus on my influence in the classroom. However, if I had the time, I

would like to explor other ways to cater for my students needs outside the

classroom through enrichment and extra-curricular activities.

Literature review


In the past, it was said that it “would not have been thought

necessary to discuss the education of the gifted and talented pupils” (Clark

and Callow 2002: 78), as schools believed that they did not have any such

pupils. However, from 2006 onwards, after the introduction of the Excellence

in Cities strategy whereby all secondary schools were asked to identify

their AG&T students as part of the school census (Ingram 2008: 11), focus

was then pointed on their education due to “a change in Government policy

and the resulting discourse and practice of teachers […]” (Lambert 2010:

99).

In order to correctly analyse this theme, we have to define the

adopted terminologies. According to Ofsted (2009: 16), gifted is the “ability

or potential in one or more academic subjects”, talented is the “ability of

potential in one or more skills” and gifted and talented includes “pupils with

one or more abilities developed to a level significantly ahead of their year

group.”

However, the question arises of whether we should label our students

in this “harmful obsession” (Lambert 2010: 99). He also suggests (2010: 101)

that the words gifted and talented imply distinct advantage and benefit, and it

is the others (or the ‘non-gifted and non-talented) that have the deficit.

It is argued (Bates and Munday 2005: 2) that AG&T students “have the

same right to a curriculum which caters for their needs”. However, they also

understand the inference of elitism, where schools “may be accused of

providing unfair treatment to these pupils who will probably succeed

‘anyway’.” Yet, would it then not be unfair to segregate these pupils? Would

providing for AG&T students really be a detriment to the progress of other

students?

Nevertheless, what effects will this AG&T label have? Research (Graham,

Macfayder and Richards 2012: 330) indicated that “learners’ disaffection […]

stems in part of from their perceived achievement in it” and they hence ask;

“Would learners feel differently about the subject if they were told they

were good at it?” Lambert (2010: 102) believes that “no doubt many pupils


(and their parents) gain satisfaction and self-esteem from allocation of

this term”, but could it also have a detrimental effect?

Graham, Macfayder and Richards (2012: 333) discovered that students do

indeed feel “pleased”, “happy” and “motivated” but also “embarrassed” and

“burdened”, all mainly in “fear of not being able to live up to

expectations.” Other research (McLachlan 2002:18) points out that AG&T

students can also act “arrogant […] often because they are reluctant to jump

through hoops which they deem unnecessary.” (Pachler, Barnes and Field 2009:

223) This proves the overarching need of appropriate differentiation to not

allow them to develop into able underachievers. AG&T differentiation is

carried out by their level of cognitive demand to ensure that class tasks

are no longer “beneath their intelligence.” (McLachlan 2002: 18)

Jim Cummins in 1984 came up with the BICS and CALP quadrant to

demonstrate language learning. Upon looking at the matrix in Appendix 1, it

is clear that typically in MFL lessons, parroting, comprehension tasks,

describing and sequencing are typical. This evidently falls below the middle

line, under low cognitive demand cognitive processes. This explains why AG&T

do not feel challenged or motivated. It is vital to plan for higher

cognitive demand exercises; for example, allowing students to compare,

contrast, summarise, recall, argue, evaluate and justify.

This theory falls hand in hand with Bloom’s Taxonomy (Bloom 1956:18)

which focuses on higher order skills and higher order tasks. He identified

six different levels of thinking, demonstrated below in hierarchical order:

(Bloom 1956: 18; Ingram 2008: 65; Bates and Munday 2005: 51)

Knowledge: recalling of information, memorising and remembering.

Comprehension: interpreting information, organising and identifying.

Application: using knowledge and methods to solve problems.

Analysis: seeing patterns, recognising hidden meanings.

Synthesis: relating knowledge from several areas and generalising.

Evaluation: assessing, comparing, developing opinions, making choices.


This supports Cummins’ quadrant in Appendix 1, it proves that typical MFL

activities fall within the top three levels of the hierarchy, reasserting

the need to focus on the more complex skills to cater for our AG&T students.

Vygotsky’s theory of the Zone of Proximal Development (1978: 86) further

corroborates this notion as he stated that “it is the distance between the

actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and

the level of potential development as determined through problem solving

under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers.” This

implies that learning only happens with “effective teaching […] followed by

the presentation of problems that slightly exceed the already mastered.” (Gross

2006: 122)

After having understood the underlying psychology, it leads us to think

about our lessons. Firstly, let us consider grouping students. Gross (2006:

120) states that there is dispute as to whether AG&T students should be

included in the mainstream classroom and that they should be offered a

curriculum which caters for them by level, pace and complexity. However,

does this promote elitism? It may demonstrate equality for AG&T students as

“the able pupil is therefore penalised if the school does not create

conditions favourable to his optimum advance” (Freeman 1958: 220) but

equally, inequality for the lesser able. As mentioned above, the National

Curriculum should be adapted to cater for every individual’s needs, so

should there be a need for a separate AG&T curriculum?

There are several ideas, according to Bates and Munday (2005: 28-31)

about class set-up. Setting, or grouping pupils of similar abilities, does

allow lessons to be targeted for a particular audience but even so, a range

of ability will still exist. Secondly, mixed ability classes aim to develop

more able pupils by allocating them leadership roles. However, in this

context, there is a very strong emphasis on differentiation, and could lead

to an imbalance of teacher support. Streaming classes, where classes are set

into ability for all subjects, does allow for some differentiation but is

“likely to fail to recognise the pupil who is talented in one particular


subject area.” Fast tracking, or withdrawal, where students can be extracted

to work with a FLA or can take early examinations makes it easier for

similar needs to be tackled, but can also have a detrimental effect by going

against of the comprehensive ethos of a school.

Previously, “children had progressed through school on the basis of

their mastery of the work of the different grade levels” yet today, we group

pupils chronologically because “it seems to be administratively convenient.”

(Gross 2006: 123) Given David Miliband’s speech in 2004 in which he declared

that “the goal is that five years from now: gifted and talented students

progress in line with their ability rather than their age” (Ingram 2008: 4),

it proves that it has been and political discourse. According to Bates and

Munday (2005: 6) AG&T students show “a preference for socialising with older

pupils.” It can be said that for such students who remain in chronological

age classes, “lasting social problems and emotional disturbance can result.”

(Gross 2006: 125) Conversely, there are other reservations, namely the

obligatory school leaving age and social and emotional development problems.

According to Teare (2002: 62), “the pupil needs to be treated as a child of

a particular chronological age no matter what his or her intellectual age

may be.” However, in doing so, is this affecting their academic progress?

After having considered class groupings, now arises the question of

how to group within the class. “Some able pupils’ preferred learning style

is a solitary one” (McLachlan 2002: 43), which is supported by Freeman

(1958: 221) who says that the able student “should be encouraged to progress

individually as fast as his ability permits.” Of course, this rationale

dates from over five decades ago, which contradicts the newer phenomenon of

cooperative learning, as it is important to “offer them possibilities for

social interaction” (McLachlan 2002:43) so that they learn to work with

others like they will in the real world. Since leadership skills can be a

quality of an AG&T student (Bates and Munday 2005), it is recommended that

we team them up in group work with lesser able students to act as a mentor.


Nonetheless, is it not possible for them to then feel frustrated at having

to almost act as a second teacher?

Nowadays, “it is imperative for our pupils to be more involved in more

of the learning” (McLachlan 2002: 53) and to be taught how to learn, and

thus group work provides “a shift away from teacher-centred lessons, towards

pupil-centred activities” (McLachlan 2002: 52)

We need also to provide other individual activities that allow for

individual learning, and therefore the need for effective lesson planning.

There is also the need for extension tasks which further extend their

learning, more in breadth of knowledge than length, through giving students

the opportunity to “develop independence, critical thinking, creative

thinking, problem solving ability and reflection.” Teachers themselves have

a responsibility of catering for each learner’s needs, which include

“enjoyment and motivation”, “use of imagination and creativity”, “autonomy

and collaboration”, “cultural understanding and insights” and “involvement

in learning process.” (Lowe 2002: 144) Therefore, Lowe (2002: 147) also

states that teachers should have “a variety in teaching approaches and

methods”, with a “range of resources and materials” which takes into account

pupils’ prior learning and get high expectations and challenges students.

They should focus upon creative and imaginative use of language,

continuously improve upon pronunciation and intonation, increase an

awareness of the culture of the country and, more importantly, on “’higher

order’ skills of deduction, inference, analysis, synthesis, evaluation”

(Lowe 2002: 147), supported by Bloom (1956: 18) and Cummins (1984).

Action ResearchData collection

Upon reading different literature and academics’ theories as to how to

cater for AG&T students, it came to the forefront that there is an amalgam

of methods with no clear solution. Of course, our AG&T students, as stated

by McLachlan (2005) and Ingram (2002), do not form a homogeneous group; some


pupils have greater competence in some skills than others and vice versa,

leaning towards the assertion that neither are AG&T strategies homogeneous.

I handed out questionnaires (Appendix 2) to my Year 8 focus group at

my placement school asking for them to rate their opinions and preferences

of activities in MFL lessons and pair, group or individual work from 1

(agree strongly) to 5 (disagree strongly). I chose this group to the fact

that this class contains very able students, the majority of whom are

predicted Level 5 as a KS3 target, while a select few are already achieving

on or above their predicted grades (Appendix 3) Thus, I wanted to find out

how to cater for their abilities as part of my lesson planning so as to not

allow them to become able underachievers.

I based my questionnaire on research carried out by Linda Fisher in

McLachlan (2002: 52) with Year 12 pupils to see if they corroborate the

beliefs of my Year 8 in question. She found that pupils would like to see,

for example, “more ICT”, “more emphasis on cultural aspects”, “more

grammar”, “pupil presentation in front of class”, “more small group work”,

“more thorough learning and practice of vocabulary” and “more freedom”. I

therefore opted to include this in my questionnaire, in addition to a

selection of lower order tasks from the BICS/CALP quadrant in Appendix 1 to

discover whether younger KS3 learners are of the same opinion and would

naturally choose high cognitive demand activities to agree with Cummins’

matrix and Bloom’s Taxonomy.

The results of my anonymous questionnaires confirmed Fisher’s

findings; the top three activities that were chosen were:

1. More ICT

2. More group work

3. More cultural awareness

What was also remarkable was the lack of low cognitive demand activities

that were ticked: I included, as mentioned above, activities which are of a

lower order, such as ‘practice of putting words in order’ and ‘comprehension


tasks’. This reveals a lack of enthusiasm about these sorts of activities

and a clear preference of those that were intellectually stimulating.

I therefore decided to base my research upon these preferences from my

students and what Fisher (in McLachlan 2002:52) found, in order to discover

if it does have an effect on their rate of progress regarding attainment and

effort.

Recommendation One: “More ICT”

My theory behind this activity was based on the above research that

AG&T students should be provided with opportunities for ICT usage in lesson

time as it is aliberating experience, in addition to stimulating independent

learning and research as part of a group. This came hand in hand with the

topic studied at the time which was Spanish tapas.

I combined cultural knowledge and research with ICT and the range of

authentic websites available. The objectives of the lesson (Appendices 4a,

4b) were to “effectively research online about a specific tapas dish, and

worked and communicated well in a chosen group. They can work together, each

with different roles (according to the Kagan Theory) and come up with an end

result through effective team work.”

As demonstrated in the lesson materials, I instructed the students to

initially choose a number from the board to give them their tapas dish, and

they should then search online for a recipe. With the ingredients, they

should access www.carrefour.es, a Spanish online supermarket, and ‘buy’ the

products so they could find out how much their dish would cost to prepare,

which would also incorporate cross-curricular Numeracy.

I chose to allow the students to choose their own groups as it would

give them a sense of autonomy, freedom and purpose in doing their task. In

their group, they had to discuss as a group who should be allocated which

role, which then gave them the experience of working together as a team,

designed by them, to come to an overall result. Using ICT and giving them

access to authentic Spanish websites would also help to demonstrate a sense

http://www.carrefour.es/


of purpose also for their language skills, and proof that it can be used

effectively in out of classroom contexts.

Overall, I believe this task offered them with a plethora of

experiences and it catered well for their needs. Upon reading Appendix 4c,

the teacher also agreed in my agenda evaluation that it was an “excellent

and engaging resource” and the activity was “motivating”. Not only could

they access authentic resources and practice their language, dictionary and

translation skills with the added challenge of numerous unknown vocabulary

items, but also put their ICT knowledge and skills to effective use. Being

able to research online promotes their independence (McLachlan 2005:67)

allowed them to increase their cultural knowledge of Spain and other

Hispanic countries, which allowed them to further extend their knowledge of

this topic by breadth and depth in addition to “shifting the focus from

teacher to learner” (McLachlan 2005:67), supporting the notion of student-

led learning.

Recommendation Two: “More emphasis on cultural aspects”

As part of an end of term summative assessment, the ML department,

aided by myself, organised a food tasting lesson which would be a cultural

experience for all students and allow cross curricular links with several

subjects such as Geography and Cookery, which, according to my own research

and that of MacLachlan, this is what students enjoy from their language

lessons.

Students had been learning about Spanish food and tapas for several

lessons, and so we gave students the chance to taste a selection of typical

Spanish gastronomy. The objectives of this lesson (Appendices 5a, 5b)

included them being able to write about what they wanted to try and why,

then what they are trying and what they think of them and then what they

tried and why on their worksheet (Appendix 5c). This challenged the students

to think about extended sentences with intensifiers, justifications, reasons


and the ability to write in three tenses, which puts them on their way to

reaching a National Curriculum Level 6.

Allowing the students to authentically experience Spanish culture in

person was very important, as the majority of students had either never been

to Spain or never tried Spanish food. On the whole, the students were highly

motivated and engaged in this activity and were willing to participate even

in target language discussion during the food tasting (Appendix 5d) I

believe this is because it evidently catered for their intellectual and

culturally inquisitive needs. Upon looking at Appendix 1, it falls under the

bracket of “compares and contrasts ideas” and “summarises” in the context-

embedded high cognitive demand, which was evidenced early to cater more for

AG&T students’ cerebral ability; with Bloom’s Taxonomy, it comes under the

sixth umbrella of ‘evaluation – making opinions and making choices.’

Recommendation Three: “More grammar”

Research indicates that AG&T students would appreciate more overt

instruction about grammar; it is “liberating as it enables them to make

connections, to analyse and identify patters […] thus […] more creativity.”

(McLachlan 2005:54) When I started Music and Technology after half term, I

decided to emphasise grammar and make aware how it is important to exploit

it to attain higher National Curriculum levels. As shown in Appendix 5c

students were already aware of grammatical expressions such as intensifiers

in the context of a writing frame. Gradually, I aimed to remove this

scaffolding to enable students to write their own opinion phrases using the

techniques available to help them achieve Level 5.

As demonstrated in Appendices 6a- 6d, I provided the students with a

table and instructed them to use a phrase from each column to get into the

habit of this word order, especially the intensifiers. When they were

acquainted with this, I also introduced ‘on the one hand, on the other

hand’, enabling them to justify their opinions and compare and contrast (a

high cognitive demand task, according to Cummins). This, alongside the


growing sentences format I used with the students, all helped to explicitly

demonstrate what they needed to do, grammatically speaking, to achieve their

level.

I stressed the importance of grammatical awareness and practiced this

through AFL and peer/self-assessment. I used a variety of strategies,

including asking students to discuss in their groups and decide upon which

National Curriculum Level a certain text exemplifies, and why is it not one

above or one below. This elicited detailed conversation about which

grammatical features were or were not included, by using the school’s

assessment policy of WWW (What went well) and EBI (Even better if).

Additionally, by giving the students homework of creating their own balanced

phrase, they were able to peer assess each other the following lesson by

swapping their homework with their peer. Not only did they have the ability

to correct any spelling and grammatical mistakes (with added competition and

motivation in the betting game task, see Appendices 6e-6f), they also had

the experience of ‘being the teacher’ and giving constructive feedback.

Through using these two methods, the students started to think aloud about

how they could improve these phrases and in turn, theirs during their two

minute IRT (Individual Reflection Time) where they reflected upon their own

academic and effort performance.

Appendix 6g-6j evidence this impact on AG&T learning as students were

“well engaged and challenged in motivating activities” through “effective

peer assessment using WWW and EBI”, were “stretched and challenged further

today” and were able to “demonstrate good awareness of how to improve” after

a series of lessons.

Putting such great importance on grammar and knowing the rules and

terminologies allows students to increase their knowledge in breadth and

depth and will also give them analytical skills to consistently improve

their own work using creativity with language, allowing them to become

independent learners who will exercise and train these thinking skills to

their advantage.


Recommendation Four: “Pupil presentation in front of class” and “More small

group work”

As mentioned above, it is common that AG&T students prefer to work

individually and not participate as effectively in cooperative learning.

However, it is important that this experience is provided to students and

so, I made an effort to include group discussion in several lessons. This

point contradicted my own findings where more students circled 4 or 5 for ‘I

like working in groups’ than ‘I like working on my own’. This may be

attributed to the fact that my placement school currently has a high

emphasis on collaborative learning, so the students were already attune to

working together.

Additionally, my research found that students disliked speaking tasks

out of the four language skills researched in the questionnaire. However,

other research proved that students wanted more presentation experience. I

thus decided to investigate this with my own students.

As shown in Appendices 7a-7b, in order to motivate students to stand

up in front of the class, I turned it

into a Dragon’s Den themed activity

where they had to pitch their ideas in

their groups to the Dragons (myself and

the rest of the class), such as in the

television show. Using their instilled,

detailed grammatical knowledge, they

were able to present a captivating pitch

using salesperson style intonation, tone

of voice and persuasive speech. I gave the students an example of what I

expected from them and from then on, gave them the freedom to continue as a

group. This allowed a focus on a student-led task and not only showed that

students can learn through themselves but also demonstrate to the teacher

what they know and remember.

Dragon’s Den NC

Level

(18th March 2013)

Total

4.2 34.5 104.8 135 5

34


Figures 1 and 2 show the students’ previous attainment levels from

December 2012 and their attainment levels from this speaking assessment. It

shows that the five students who were on a 3.5 and 4 raised their grades to

at least a 4.2, and that a lot of the students who were on a 4.5 have now

increased to a 4.8 or even a level 5. These numbers illustrate the students’

progress in the last term, in addition to the fact that they performed very

well in this summative assessment, inferring that they found pupil

presentations to the class intellectually stimulating and enjoyable. Upon

looking at Appendix 7c, it verifies that this type of activity was “student-

led” and that it was inspiring and challenging, matching previous research

that students want a focus on more student-centred activities and a shift

away from teacher-centred lessons (McLachlan 2005:52).

Recommendation Five: “More thorough learning and practice of vocabulary”

Research also highlighted the need for extension tasks to be more

about depth and breadth, not length or quantity – they need to be

“qualitatively different” (Ingram 2002: 54). They need to be of a higher,

more intellectual calibre so that it caters for their cognitive demand.

Therefore, I chose to do an experiment with a low cognitive demand activity

(sequences) and a high cognitive demand activity (classifies) (Appendix 1)

in order for students to study vocabulary more thoroughly (Appendices 8a-

8b).

Figure 1 Figure 2


I put up the extension task at the same time I asked my students to

complete the initial task, in order to determine which task would be the

most appealing. As I was monitoring their progress by walking around and

working with the different groups, I discovered that six out of the seven

groups had automatically started the extension task and were offering me the

answers before they had even started the main activity. When asked what

their answer was for the ordering activity, they expressed that they had not

yet looked at the first exercise, but were very eager to discuss their ideas

for the extension task. This evidently demonstrates the fact that high

cognitive demand tasks (or Analysis) appeal to AG&T students more than low

cognitive demand tasks (in this case, Application), according to the

aforementioned theories by Cummins and Bloom respectively. This is backed up

by my lesson observation (Appendix 8c) where it states that the “extension

task with coloured boxes promoted good learning conversation.”

Recommendation Six: “More freedom”

Research (Ingram 2002: 68) stressed the importance of homework, as it

is a way of reinforcing what they have learnt in class, but allows AG&T

students to further challenge themselves. It is an effective way of

individualising the curriculum and allows students to express themselves and

their imagination outside the classroom. It is important to combine the two

to provide creative homework as it will motivate them to be creative with

their ideas and language.

I set the students homework to consolidate their knowledge of fruits

and to use this vocabulary in a different context of creating their own

cocktail recipe (Appendices 9a-9b). Out of the thirty-four homeworks that I

corrected, the below show their marks:

Effort Grade Total4 (Effort shown, but room for

improvement)

5

5 (Very good effort for the student) 14

Figure 3


6 (Excellent effort for the student) 1534

As the above quantitative data represents in Figure 3, just over 85%

of the students put in very good or excellent effort in this home learning

activity, which reasserts the notion that a well organised, creative

activity can help to achieve high levels of interest, motivation in

participation.

National Curriculum Level Total

4.2 84.5 134.8 13

34

The data in Figure 4 also illustrates a correlation between higher

levels of effort, and higher attainment grades. In the majority of cases,

the students with a 6 for Effort attained an NC Level 4.8. This data, when

compared with their Term 2 Attainment grades in Figure 1 and linked with my

lesson observation (Appendix 9c) which states that “students were very

engaged by resource”, it demonstrates that creative ideas, not only for

homework but also for class activities, can help the students to attain

higher grades.

ConclusionBefore commencing this study while studying for the literature review,

I realised that the literature all had an amalgam of recommendations of how

to cater best for AG&T students and that there was no one best way to do so,

which is the reason why I wanted to explore different methods of teaching

and activities to discover how I could cater for my AG&T students more

Figure 4


effectively. Upon researching for my action research, I could conclude that

there is no one definitive answer, especially as my research sometimes

refuted that of leading academics.

In my study, I studied in depth six different methods of teaching.

Through cross-analysing their effectiveness in raising motivation and

therefore effort grades and attainment levels, I would say that, for me,

activities such as the Dragon’s Den task and setting the ‘design your own

cocktail homework’ had the most positive impact. Every activity certainly

had a positive impact on their progress to a certain extent, but given my

enthusiasm about creativity and innovation, I think this spread to my

students and their efforts.

Regarding the different between individual and cooperative learning, I

would conclude that the students in my placement school enjoyed a mixture of

both, both in practice and evidence through the results of my questionnaire.

This contradicts the general consensus of academics’ previous research, but

given the context of my placement school as mentioned in the introduction, I

believe my school has a high presence of cooperative learning in order to

motivate students to work in the first place.

In order to plan lessons, I have discovered that it is vital to have

the three theories of Bloom, Cummins and Vygotsky in mind: with these three

ways of thinking, and by choosing activities that are based on higher

cognitive demands and processes, lesson planning and therefore the students’

learning will be linked more efficiently to their cerebral ability.

In contrary to Oscar Wilde’s famous quote, “1% inspiration, 99%

perspiration”, I would say that it should be 99% inspiration, 1%

perspiration regarding lesson planning. I discovered through researching

(Lowe 2005:147) that the role of the teacher in students’ learning is vital.

It was mentioned previously that it is important for AG&T students to have a

more pupil-centred education, but it is imperative to highlight the role of

the teacher who provides them with motivating contexts for learning, sets

high expectations, provides the main target language source in the first


place and plays a key role in encouraging target language use by pupils.

There should definitely be a balance between effective language teaching and

learning from the teacher in both teacher-led activities and student-led

activities, but with high levels of support, creativity, inspiration,

innovation and freedom to complement this.

Assignment Two Bibliography

Bates, J and Munday, S (2005) Able, gifted and talented (London: Continuum)

Bloom, B (1956) Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (London: Longmans)


Clark, C and Callow, R (2002) Educating the gifted and talented: resource issues and processes for teachers (London: David Fulton)

Convery, A and Coyle, D (1993) Differentiation - taking the initiative (London: Centre forInformation on Language Teaching and Research)

Cummins, J. (1984) Bilingual Education and Special Education: Issues in Assessment and Pedagogy (San Diego: College Hill)

Freeman, S (1958) Educating the Talented Secondary School Pupil in Modern Languages. (The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 42, No. 5 (May 1958), pp.218-221.

Graham, S, Macfayden, T and Richards, B (2012) Learners’ perceptions of being identified as very able: Insights from Modern Foreign Languages and Physical Education (Journal of Curriculum Studies, 44:3, pp.323-348)

Gross, M (2006) To group of not to group; is that the question? In Smith, C (2006) Including the gifted and talented: making inclusion work for more gifted and able learner (Abington:Routeledge)

Ingram, G (2008) Meeting the needs of your most able pupils: Modern Foreign Languages (London: Routeledge)

Lowe, H (2002) Modern Foreign Languages. In Eyre, D and Lowe, H (2002) Curriculum provision for the gifted and talented in the secondary school (London: National Association for Able Children in Education)

McLachlan, A (2002) Raising the standard: addressing the needs of gifted and talented pupils (London: Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research)

Ofsted (2009) Gifted and Talented Pupils in Schools (Manchester: Ofsted)

Pachler, N, Barnes, A and Field, K (2009) Learning to Teach Modern Foreign Languagesin the Secondary School (London: Routeledge)

Teare, B (2002) Effective Provision for Able and Talented Children (Stafford: Network Educational Press)

Vygotsky, L (1978) Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/education/school_tables/secondary/12/html/eng_maths_879.stm?compare (accessed 20/03/2013)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/education/school_tables/secondary/12/html/eng_maths_879.stm?compare

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/education/school_tables/secondary/12/html/eng_maths_879.stm?compare

How can I cater for the needs of my Able, Gifted and Talented students more effectively?

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