NSE_BQIC Report Learn Academies Trust

Big Questions in Classrooms Project Report: Learn Academies Trust

Project Report

Delivering Big Questions in the Key Stage 2 classroom.

Lead staff Steve Roddy (Director) Jessica Lydiate (RE Lead and teacher at Hope Hamilton Primary School) Charlotte Watson (RE Lead Professional for Learn Academies Trust and teacher at Queniborough C E Primary school and Thrussington C E Primary School)

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Telling the story of our project

Telling the story of our project

From the outset of this project, we wanted to explore how ‘Big Questions’ lessons could operate in the primary classroom, what they might look like in our schools, specifically how they would work in our Key Stage 2 classrooms. We wanted to explore how to implement this ‘Big Questions’ concept, to try things out and to develop our questions. We wanted to give our children a chance to engage in a Big Questions session.

We were driven by the following questions: What would a ‘Big Questions’ session look like in Year 4, Year 5 and in a mixed Year 5/6?

How could we create safe spaces for pupils to explore and engage confidently in these sessions?

We recognised that the primary school setting was quite different to that of a secondary one with its discrete subject departments. We wanted to use the fact that in a primary classroom the classroom teacher is often teaching both RE and Science lessons, has access to both schemes of work and is therefore able to see where connections could arise.

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Big Questions in Classrooms

To begin with, we asked our PCGE students to experiment in teaching a ‘Big Questions’ session, using the resources we provided, and with support from their mentor. We then used their feedback to plan our next steps. We also tried Big Questions sessions in our own classrooms. As the project extended over two academic years, in one setting we were able to re-teach our initial session with adaptations. In one school we used the question, Are humans or animals more important? We wanted to see what children aged 8/9 could bring to this question.

In the first cycle of lessons, we found pupils needed far more scaffolding and input as many were struggling to generate responses. Pupils found it challenging to think of answers to the question and the few that offered solutions then held on to them rigidly and found it difficult to be open to the views of others.

While we wanted to create a safe space for children to formulate their own responses rather than offer answers ourselves, we soon realized that the pupils needed more input.

Therefore, in the second cycle we provided pupils with a wide variety of answers to the question and then asked them to categorise the answers. This process provided pupils with time to engage with different ways of answering the question which resulted in much more confident individual answers by the end of the session. Pupils worked in groups to categorise the answers and we found this made the activity more accessible for all.

The idea of a big question (specifically there being more than one answer to a question) was a new idea for some pupils, leading us to the conclusion, that the role of Big Questions in Key Stage 2 is perhaps to introduce the idea of a Big Question having more than one possible answer and that this is permissible. One challenge we found was the openness of the session and the lack of an overt outcome; pupils had the freedom to find their own response, or not. At times we felt like we were sowing the seeds for more sophisticated discussion/s in the future. During our second cycle we also tagged our Big Question onto a related Science unit, enabling pupils to use more scientific knowledge and bring this to the conversation.

“We wanted to use the fact that in a primary classroom the classroom teacher is often teaching both RE and Science lessons, has access to both schemes of work and is therefore able to see where connections could arise.”

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Thinking about the EEF Implementation Considerations

From our experience we found that:

We spent quite a large amount of time in the ‘prepare’ stage of this project and also in the ‘deliver’ stage.

Linking our big questions sessions to science topics led to greater discussion as the pupils had prior knowledge to use The pupils found it rather alien to have lessons with no desired outcome so this concept needed to be explained before the question was introduced.

Knowing the pupils was vital to enable them to open-up and share their views Each Trust school had a different approach to teaching Science and RE so we found one curriculum plan would not fit them all. Each school needed to decide how to implement the concept of Big Questions, but with our guidance.

The selected questions needed to be age appropriate We found there were some units of RE which would fit well with some of the big questions in the future.

Based on our findings we then chose to repeat the two stages to take our learning one step further. We are not yet in the ‘sustain’ phase as we are deciding how best to move forwards to ensure practice in this area is manageable, impactful and useful in each of our schools. We feel this will take time to do well.

For us, implementation included: Trialling ideas for delivering ‘big questions’ sessions in a primary classroom Testing ideas, which had to be adapted significantly before sharing across the trust Selecting appropriate disciplinary knowledge, which presented a particular challenge, requiring us to decide whether our focus should be on developing subject knowledge or on engaging with big questions Identifying practical steps to help rollout across Trust, e.g. linking big question to relevant science unit Adapting session to incorporate greater scaffolding

Thinking about connecting ways of knowing in RE and Science

Thinking about connecting ways of knowing in RE and Science

Essentially, our intention was to develop something we felt we could roll out to other staff confidently in the future, to be able to share with them both the realities and challenges of what this could look like in the classroom.

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Big Questions in Classrooms

Deeper dialogues A conversation was held between two teachers about their differing experiences of delivering the Big Question sessions.

Both teachers described the challenges and successes.

These different experiences then lead to changing the action plan and deciding on new next steps to the previously planned ones. This then sent us down a slightly different route and we ended in a different place to what we had expected, but in a more confident place due to the extra evidence acquired and the extended feedback process.

Sustaining this work in the future Initially, we would like to use this approach in other Key Stage 2 classes across our schools, linking it to a science unit. We would then like to develop a PowerPoint to introduce it more widely across the trust, and evaluate its impact.

We are interested in linking a science unit with a big question to RE. Perhaps we could use the Spirituality driver or training space for this?

We are aware that staff need to recognise the skills involved in this type of approach, and we all need to consider how these skills develop across Key Stage 2, from Years 3 to 6. For example, pupils in Years 3 and 4 may be able to categorise predetermined answers, whereas pupils in Years 5 and 6 should be able to generate their own answers or lines of enquiry.

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Key outcomes

01 Developed and trialled Big Questions sessions in KS2.

02 Linked Big Questions to science topics for deeper discussion.

03 Created scaffolding strategies to support pupil engagement.

Resources and outcomes

Resources and outcomes

Figure 1: Example of slide from KS2 RE lesson

Figure 2: Example of slide from KS2 RE lesson

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Big Questions in Classrooms

Figure 3: Pupil evaluations of the lesson

Click here to view more resources.

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