How can you encourage depth for gifted pupils when all pupils do the same activity?

Review your current scheme of work to check:

the essential activities for all pupils

what extension activities you could provide for gifted pupils

how you will organise and manage the extension activities

that focused practical tasks and product evaluation activities are adapted so that there is a difference in pace and demand.

You can add depth to activities in product evaluation tasks by asking pupils to explore values issues and encouraging critical thinking. For example, they could:

consider the product's benefits and disadvantages for its users and others

consider the product's impact on a wider range of people

evaluate its environmental impact and any unintended outcomes

balance social and financial issues when evaluating their own and others' designs.

For a typical product analysis activity:

ask yourself what level of result you would realistically expect

identify what a much better than normal result might look like

decide how you will identify pupils who might need to work differently from the norm

decide how to vary the work to accommodate these pupils

identify where you may need to catch a pupil early in an activity and talk about, for example, better quality research, using a wider range of source material, producing a larger number of initial ideas, carrying out more detailed testing.

Year 4: Lighting

Unit 4E: Lighting it up
Design and make a new type of light that you can control and that satisfies certain needs of the person who will use it.

Product evaluation activity

Discuss the circumstances in which each light is used and relate these to the particular features of its design, for example a light to light up a display, a night-light for a baby, a student who needs a light at a table, a security light. How does a designer take account of individual differences/preferences when designing a product to be used by the general public?

In this activity, all pupils are evaluating lights used in different circumstances. You could organise this so that gifted pupils work at a more sophisticated level, evaluating a more complex range of lights that are used in more unusual situations and for very particular individual user needs. The information about how a designer takes differences and preferences into account would reflect the depth of their review.

Year 7: Evaluating textiles

Unit 7A(iii): Understanding materials: focus: textiles

Product evaluation activity

Ask the pupils to examine a range of existing products, for example, pupils could investigate in small groups a selection of sports kit for different functions, with a range of features.

Extension

Some pupils may also be able to consider the impact of a product beyond the designer's intentions.

In this activity, all pupils are examining sports kits. To extend the activity for gifted pupils, you could ask some groups to look at the impact of a product beyond the purpose for which it was designed. They could, for example, discuss the cross-over of sports kit into fashion products, and the cost/profit of products, sponsorship featured on sports kit, new materials and the recycling of fabrics.

Year 9: Selecting materials

Unit 9A(i): Selecting materials: focus: food

Product evaluation activity

Ask the pupils to explore how the development of new materials/ingredients and technologies has allowed designers to achieve things that were not possible before, for example we can now make materials/ingredients with the properties that we want, and in the future we are likely to see materials made to measure for a huge range of applications.

Ask the pupils to consider the wider implications of choosing a particular way of meeting a need or solving a problem. They could think about whether meeting the need is worth the resources required and whether the proposed solution has other consequences that should be taken into account, for example concerns about bio-diversity, genetically-modified crops, the use of growth hormones and antibiotics in the production of food.

Different pupils could approach this same activity in a number of ways. In one secondary school, staff selected year 9 pupils to take part in an online debate on genetically-modified foods, giving pupils an opportunity to put questions to experts from the Royal Holloway College and Greenpeace. Pupils worked independently and were allowed one hour to research genetically-modified foods and to prepare questions. The use of the internet to interactively access remote sources in this way was shown to be a positive approach for working with gifted pupils.

Schemes of work

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