“Challenge” is a term that’s constantly bandied about but often misunderstood in schools. 

All too often we see GCSE-style exam questions and marking criteria paraded in front of students in Years 7 to 9 in the mistaken belief this is what challenge looks like. 

But challenge in a key stage 3 classroom is about much more than prematurely pushing students towards GCSE material and assessment.

It is about structures and routine, built around high expectations and carefully but appropriately considered rigour. Not just in a “challenging” lesson, but in every lesson, for every student.

Here are some things to bear in mind:

It’s all in the language

Expectations about the vocabulary you expect students to engage with and use themselves is key.

Expose them to lengthy, quality writing to explicitly develop opportunities to make inferences and decode; do not underestimate the power of reading to both acquire and demonstrate knowledge, through targeted questioning and modelling.

Teach explicitly: discuss and model vocabulary to ensure they can apply it to their own understanding and also use it to explain themselves with laser-sharp focus.

Don’t think of an easier word. Use the word you need to and expect to hear it back, in context, in the lesson and in following lessons.

Prompt students to respond (in writing and speech) using connectives so they are more fluent at extending their responses and making links.

Celebrate when they elaborate

Elaboration is pivotal in challenging key stage 3 students to stretch themselves and move knowledge from the working to the long-term memory.

Questioning should seek justification; prediction; identification; inference; connection; prioritisation and categorisation. By asking students to interrogate their own understanding they are inevitably thinking harder.

Develop routines for students to make meaningful links to prior learning so that they are challenged to develop a schema of understanding and don’t shy away from both using and expecting to hear metalanguage, whether this is through testing, do-it-now activities, responses to feedback or questioning.

Regular testing is hugely important but a meaningful part of challenging students is discussing and elaborating on misconceptions; why a detractor in a multiple-choice question may have been chosen, for example.

Assuming we are teaching our pre-GCSE students the very best in our subjects, what are we deliberately planning for them to do with this knowledge?

It is not enough for students to rehearse or learn by rote or respond to a GCSE-style question that won’t necessarily cultivate academic thinking - they need to think hard about what they know. Can they reduce it? Critique it? Compare it? Extend it? Connect it?

Writing matters

Students need to ensure they are able to write with confidence and fluency, and extend their ideas.

It is our job to ensure that academic writing is modelled to them - not just the exemplar finished product but the thought process and commentary of how to create a well-crafted written response. This means using the routines around language and elaboration to get their tone, style, structures, expression and length correct.

Shared writing and the use of a visualiser or images of planning/drafting challenges students to more carefully consider how they organise their own writing and also addresses a lack of confidence and self-criticism in the formative years of secondary writing.

We need to build writing stamina in our key stage 3 students. We need to challenge them to write long pieces more often, in more depth and with more success. And we should not be afraid of getting them to repeat a task and improve it if it isn’t good enough.

I’ve realised that, where I haven’t challenged appropriately in Years 7 to 9, the stretch is lacking because I haven’t been confident in my subject knowledge; and conversely, where I do drive challenge at KS3, it is where my subject knowledge is strongest.

I enjoy teaching what I know very well, and I enjoy challenging the students to progress rapidly. And this, beyond anything else, is where the true driver of challenge in early secondary lies. 

Lisa Lockley is assistant headteacher at John Willmott School in the West Midlands