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Sharing a few tips on what supports my department to achieve consistently strong outcomes. You may agree or disagree but this is what works in my experience and what we revisit regularly as part of our ‘Battle plan’.
1. Apathy is the enemy..do not, I repeat, do not fall into the trap of accepting passive learners and think that they will perform well because they nod along, complete tasks and don’t disrupt. Push these students just as hard by focusing on high expectations of progress.
2. Ensure ALL questioning has a command word and how to respond to command terms is drilled from the start. I have yet to meet a Y7 that knows the difference between describing/explaining and can do this to a high standard without explicit instruction.
3. Along with specific command term .. all questions should have allocated marks with detailed success criteria. In my experience vague questioning disproportionately hampers the understanding and progress of low ability students negatively impacting outcomes.
4. Always provide a very strong model answer or WAGOLL to allow students to self regulate then slowly withdraw these once their confidence is built... the best way for students to achieve their best it to show them what they best’ is.
5. The bottom end is where you get the most ‘bang for your buck’ in terms of progress. These students don’t need easier tasks or lower expectations they need to have every tool in your kit deployed to encourage exceptional outcomes. Don’t underestimate these students!
6. Recap, recap, recap! Ensure you are embedding a constant cycle of retrieval practice into your curriculum and support with model answers... excellence is a habit so make sure you allocate plenty of time to support excellence.
7. Know your students areas for improvement, make sure they know it and most importantly, make sure they know how to make these improvements. If you are repeating the same feedback then they probably don’t know how to make the change without being implicitly shown.
8. Communication between teacher, student and parent is key! Praise heavily as soon as possible whilst providing next steps everytime. Similarly, tackle underperformance straight away.. don’t think it will fix itself with time this only perpetuates progress gaps. Get on the 
9. Don’t assume: make sure that scaffolding for knowledge and understanding is built into lessons and resources so that Ss can self regulate to support consistent progress. Don’t think ‘they should know that’ this once again disproportionately impacts lower abilities.
