The path was flat and smooth, and bikes of all shapes and sizes sped along it in the sunshine. All but one: a small bike which moved only a few inches at a time before grinding to a halt.
I sighed and repeated my pep talk about keeping your feet moving on the pedals. As usual, it had no effect.
“Can you teach your brother to do what you’re doing?” I asked his sister as she zoomed up beside us.
“Of course. It’s just like running on the spot,” she told him.
“Oh, OK,” he said, and instantly spurted forwards, his feet going like pistons. I watched in disbelief. In less than 10 seconds my six-year-old had got better results than I, with all my years of teaching experience, had achieved in the past few months.
Learning from your peers is part of school life. From swear words and cartwheels to how to use a protractor or conceal uneaten vegetables from a dinner lady, children are constantly teaching each other new skills (whether you want them to or not).
Some teachers try to capitalise on this and build regular peer-coaching exercises into their lessons. Personally, I believe in proceeding with caution: there are only so many hours in the school day and, on balance, the children are still better off looking to me for instruction, rather than to someone who has yet to master it’s and its - but that doesn’t stop me from knowing when to back off when I spot a child doing my job for me.
Sticking with it
Like with Teigan and Mohammed. When the foundation stage teacher and I were pairing my 10-year-olds and her four-year-olds for shared reading, Teigan was my ace card. She was a very confident reader and a natural leader. Mohammed was not keen on reading. Actually, he wasn’t keen on anything that involved staying still. With an irrepressible devotion to motion, his main goal in life was to climb any and every object in view, breaking off only to post Lego bricks into increasingly inconvenient spaces.
But Teigan wasn’t discouraged. Realising that her young charge was not going to stay the distance with a picture book, she calmly picked him up and wedged his small frame between her legs. Pinning him in like this, she read him the book, punctuating it with questions about the story which, amazingly, he started to answer.
A few weeks on and Mohammed was happily sharing a beanbag with Teigan, tentatively sounding out CVC words.
“He’s doing really well, Miss, isn’t he?” she told me brightly. “I’ve told him that if he reads three more words on this page he can have a sticker.”
I watched as he sounded out the words then wordlessly pushed the sheet of stickers in her direction. I moved on to another pair: out-taught, outclassed and superfluous to requirements.
Jo Brighouse is a pseudonym for a primary school teacher in the Midlands. She tweets @jo_brighouse
