When I was working in English as an additional language, I remember a conversation with a Year 4 teacher whose class was learning about rainforest ecosystems.
For some of the pupils still developing their English, the teacher felt it would be enough if they finished the unit able to say, “It is a tree. It is big. It is green.”
I asked when those children were going to learn about the rainforest.
That was their opportunity to encounter those ideas. The rest of the class would move on, and there wasn’t another rainforest unit waiting somewhere down the line for when their English caught up.
I understood the intention. We want children to experience success, and we worry about overwhelming them. But we can end up deciding what they’re capable of before they’ve had the chance to show us.
I shared that memory with Alex Fairlamb in this week’s podcast. She talks about how differentiation can become a set of predetermined tasks that limit what some children get to learn.
Her example of supporting a child with reading comprehension makes this practical. The child still encounters the ambitious text. The teacher might spend longer modelling how to make sense of it, work through a smaller section together, or explain unfamiliar vocabulary. Frequent checks for understanding help the teacher decide what support is needed and when it can come away.
That takes knowledge of the child and time to think. Alex asks a question I think school leaders need to hear: where are we making room for that thinking in teachers’ working days?
Before we ask colleagues to produce another version of a worksheet, perhaps we could give them time to discuss what’s making the learning difficult for a particular child.
Where might our efforts to make learning manageable be putting important ideas out of a child’s reach?You can listen to my conversation with Alex here.
Shane
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