Pupil story: Articulate Amy

Amy, who is in Year 9, likes school and tends to do well academically. She is the type of student who is often in the school library, takes plenty of books home and loves visiting a book shop.

Amy has little trouble expressing herself orally or in writing and has no trouble accessing the curriculum. Her strong verbal skills ensure that she does particularly well in English and the humanities, and while she doesn’t excel in maths or science, she usually does enough to get average or slightly above average grades. In fact, she tends to do well even in subjects she doesn’t like because she always understands what the teacher wants and what is expected of her.

Reading and writing assignments, both creative and factual, are her forte. She is always an eager participant in classroom discussions and has little trouble extracting the main facts from a text, ordering them in a rational manner and presenting an argument or a thesis cogently. Amy’s reading ability is so advanced that she is reading meaningfully, not just mechanically. She will understand what an author is trying to convey, what satire, polemic or inference are, how a character is developed, and all the literary and textual devices that authors deploy.

Fast-paced instruction suits Amy because she learns quickly, and as she is self-motivated, she responds equally well to activities that foster independent learning.

Her verbal dexterity can obscure her weaknesses, however. She struggles with elements of the science and design curricula that rely on practical skills or visualisations and her teachers have noticed that she is not as engaged in class as she used to be. Her work, particularly in English and arts subjects, is still above the class average but she isn’t always performing at the high level her overall ability profile suggests is possible.

“Amy is typical of many bright students whose excellent verbal abilities allow them to do enough to get by, but which can also serve to mask hidden weaknesses,” says Ian Mooney, Strategic Lead on Partnerships and Assessment at the Northern Schools Trust.

“They tend to coast if they’re not given activities that stimulate their imagination or engage their higher order thinking skills. This can be especially so at Key Stage 3, before the challenges of GCSE kick in. Students like Amy can underperform if these problems aren’t identified and they are not stretched with more challenging material.”

Amy’s teaching and learning needs

In a verbal-heavy school environment, Amy has little difficulty with most academic work, although activities that require her to think spatially and/or do not tap into her strong vocabulary and verbal dexterity can be more challenging. This may present as surprising to some of her teachers and others around her because Amy presents as being a strong, confident learner.

Ideas for further supporting her include:

• Develop Amy’s spatial reasoning skills through the use of symbolic representations at any opportunity: language, maps, diagrams, sketches and graphs, for example;
• Use verbal analogies to help Amy to link non-verbal and verbal content;
• Encourage gesturing, and the use of the physical alongside the verbal;
• Provide Amy with additional support for any activities that involve spatial skills and remind colleagues that although she usually performs well academically, in this field she may struggle;
• Incorporate activities that develop independent learning;
• Encourage Amy to read extensively and choose from a wide range of material;
• Develop her higher order thinking skills by using Q and A sessions that require Amy to justify her opinions;
• Employ extension activities that require her to test theses, predictions and outcomes;
• Encourage Amy to try her hand at creative writing, advanced discussion and debate either in class or in extra-curricular activities.