Greater Depth

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Aidan Severs Consulting

Helping school leaders develop ambitious curricula, confident teachers and effective leadership.

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Along with being a primary school teacher and leader, blogging is where this all started for Aidan. If it wasn't for his passion for writing and sharing his learning and experiences, he wouldn't be working as an education consultant with schools across the country today. Shared best practice should be available to all and here on the Aidan Severs Consulting blog you can get ideas for making a difference in your own school. The blog is also a great place to learn exactly the kind of work that Aidan can partner with your school on.

Greater Depth: What The Government's Response To The CAR Has To Say

Greater Depth: What The Government's Response To The CAR Has To Say

Greater Depth: What The Government's Response To The CAR Has To Say

When the CAR report was published it was disappointing to find no mention of pupils working at greater depth. For all its talk about inclusivity and high expectations, it felt like a glaring omission. However, when the government's response came through, there was some relief: "A good-quality curriculum should also challenge those who are learning at greater depth by allowing them to deepen their learning, exploring concepts in more detail, applying content to different conte

Nov 10, 20255 min read

Rethinking Differentiation: The Mixing Desk Model for Responsive, Inclusive Teaching

Rethinking Differentiation: The Mixing Desk Model for Responsive, Inclusive Teaching

Rethinking Differentiation: The Mixing Desk Model for Responsive, Inclusive Teaching

The Challenge of Meeting Every Child’s Needs You know that the children in your class(es) have needs which are many and varied. You want to meet those needs. But meeting all the different needs is difficult, time-consuming and draining. But it's got to be done. What Is the Mixing Desk Model? The Mixing Desk Model is a practical approach to adaptive teaching and differentiation. Rather than giving different pupils different tasks, teachers adjust the level of support they prov

Adaptive Teaching

Nov 4, 20257 min read

Primary school teaching and learning challenge

Primary school teaching and learning challenge

The Challenge of Challenge: What Does It Mean in Primary Schools?

What does challenge actually mean in primary teaching? It sounds like a straightforward question. Sometimes challenge means pitching learning appropriately so that pupils have to think hard and learn something new. Sometimes it means providing something additional for pupils who have already met the intended learning, particularly pupils working at greater depth. If a school doesn't distinguish between these meanings, conversations about challenge can quickly become confused.

Oct 20, 20257 min read

The 6 Profiles Of Children Working At Greater Depth

The 6 Profiles Of Children Working At Greater Depth

The 6 Profiles Of Children Working At Greater Depth

Way back in the 80s when I was a mere child and some of you weren't even born, George T. Betts and Maureen Neihart were thinking about gifted and talented children, and realising that they weren't just one homogenous group. They could see, just as we can today, that one child considered to be gifted and/or talented could be quite different to another. So they set about finding out whether or not there were any sub-categories of gifted and talented child. According to them, it

Oct 13, 20256 min read

Wondering What To Do About Greater Depth?

Your curriculum is great. You meet the needs of your pupils with SEND. But you know you could be doing more for those working at Greater Depth. But what? I have the answers.

Jun 9, 20253 min read

Greater Depth: Pupil Pen Portraits and Personalised Challenge

Greater Depth: Pupil Pen Portraits and Personalised Challenge

Greater Depth: Pupil Pen Portraits and Personalised Challenge

Recently I worked with two schools within a trust on their identification of pupils who are working at greater depth. This is a piece of work I'm doing in varying ways with different schools. At the moment, the schools who are doing something about this are ahead of the curve and are doing things that eventually other schools will want to catch up with. I'm trying to share lots of elements of the work we do together to help you and your school to do just that. How to assess p

Mar 24, 20255 min read

Teacher personalising challenge for pupils working at greater depth

Teacher personalising challenge for pupils working at greater depth

How to Personalise Challenge for Pupils Working at Greater Depth

How should teachers challenge pupils working at greater depth without simply giving them harder work? Personalising challenge means starting with the individual pupil rather than automatically giving them a more difficult task. Pupils working at greater depth may already have secure knowledge, strong independence or particular strengths, but they will also have areas where they can develop further. In this post, I explore how teachers can use what they know about individual p

Mar 17, 20258 min read

From SEND To Greater Depth: Taking Everyone On The Journey (And Getting Them All To The Destination)

From SEND To Greater Depth: Taking Everyone On The Journey (And Getting Them All To The Destination)

From SEND To Greater Depth: Taking Everyone On The Journey (And Getting Them All To The Destination)

Imagine your next unit of work as a journey into a city centre. In this post I'll use a journey into the centre of London because it was when working with a school there that I started to use this analogy. You want all your pupils to experience a visit to Buckingham Palace, so you plan a route on the tube. You plan the best route - its economical, its efficient, and, after checking the tube map for stops with wheelchair access, its accessible to all pupils. But you know there

Adaptive Teaching

Dec 10, 20245 min read

Assessment: Why Should I Identify Children Working At Greater Depth In Foundation Subjects?

Assessment: Why Should I Identify Children Working At Greater Depth In Foundation Subjects?

Assessment: Why Should I Identify Children Working At Greater Depth In Foundation Subjects?

I recently wrote about how we might assess and identify children who are working at greater depth. Upon sharing the blog post, someone questioned: "Why would I want to identify greater depth children in foundation subjects?" Which is most definitely a fair question. We should query anything we do in schools, afterall time and all other resources are precious. I would never recommend that anyone do anything in a school without really understanding why they were doing it. The f

Oct 29, 20244 min read

Assessment: How Can I Identify Greater Depth Children In Foundation Subjects?

Assessment: How Can I Identify Greater Depth Children In Foundation Subjects?

Assessment: How Can I Identify Greater Depth Children In Foundation Subjects?

Uncover the complexities of identifying greater depth children with an insightful assessment that goes beyond traditional methods.

Oct 15, 20245 min read

Developing A Greater Depth Toolkit To Aid Task Design

Developing A Greater Depth Toolkit To Aid Task Design

Developing A Greater Depth Toolkit To Aid Task Design

Having written a few blog posts over the years about working with pupils of greater depth, I occasionally get requests to work with schools on their greater depth provision. One such request recently caused me to revisit this toolkit that I had worked on previously with a couple of other schools. The focus of this toolkit came from one of the general principles of challenge for greater depth that I wrote about in this blog post: Provide Opportunities For Children To Demonstra

Oct 1, 20246 min read

Starter for 5: Greater Depth

Starter for 5: Greater Depth

Starter for 5: Greater Depth

1. Greater Depth: General Principles Of Challenge For Higher Prior Attaining Pupils 6 general principles to consider when thinking about how to challenge higher prior attaining pupils: More (and More Complex) Knowledge Provide Opportunities For Children To Demonstrate And Do Something With Their Knowledge Teach Masterclasses Remove Scaffolds and Support To Encourage Independence Communicate High Expectations Personalise The Challenge https://www.aidansevers.com/post/greater-d

Nov 28, 20232 min read

Challenge for All vs. Challenge for Children Working At Greater Depth

Challenge for All vs. Challenge for Children Working At Greater Depth

Challenge for All vs. Challenge for Children Working At Greater Depth

Is it just the children working at greater depth who are being challenged, or are you challenging everyone? In trying to show that you are providing something extra for your children working at greater depth are you accidentally neglecting to challenge all the other children? How can you tell the difference between the two? Does everyone actually need to be challenged? Let's first of all establish that we do want to challenge everyone. Yes, we might want to ensure that there

Oct 6, 20236 min read

Greater Depth: More Than Harder Tasks

Greater Depth: More Than Harder Tasks

Greater Depth: More Than Harder Tasks

Children working at greater depth need a challenge but there is more to it than preparing some more difficult tasks for them...

Sep 11, 20233 min read

Greater Depth: General Principles Of Challenge For Higher Prior Attaining Pupils

Greater Depth: General Principles Of Challenge For Higher Prior Attaining Pupils

Greater Depth: General Principles Of Challenge For Higher Prior Attaining Pupils

6 general principles to consider when thinking about how to challenge higher prior attaining pupils...

Nov 29, 202111 min read

Whole Class Reading: Providing Challenge For Children Working At Greater Depth

Whole Class Reading: Providing Challenge For Children Working At Greater Depth

Whole Class Reading: Providing Challenge For Children Working At Greater Depth

With whole class reading increasing in popularity, one of the most asked questions is around the issue of catering to the needs of all learners. Recently, I tackled how to help lower prior attainers within the whole class reading session and promised at the end of that blog post to write this one. So here it is. To preface my suggestions I'd like to point out that this list is not at all exhaustive and what you do with the children in your class who are working at greater dep

Nov 12, 20218 min read

What Does 'Greater Depth' Look Like In Primary Maths?

What Does 'Greater Depth' Look Like In Primary Maths?

What Does 'Greater Depth' Look Like In Primary Maths?

A blog post exploring the meaning behind the term 'greater depth' and how we might help children working at 'greater depth'.

Oct 14, 20217 min read

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