Teachers need to plan to develop the breadth and depth of pupils' experiences, and the quality of their responses and outcomes.

In each of the following aspects and more, teachers need to be both demanding and supportive. Pupils need high expectations, coupled with continued and active support to enable them to respond to the challenge.

Broadening knowledge, skills and understanding

A helpful way to broaden and extend the geographical knowledge, skills and understanding of gifted pupils is to change and vary the scales and contexts in the subject. This will not only increase pupils' knowledge, but will also provide opportunities for comparison, analysis and explanation. Teachers can achieve this by:

• change of scale (for example, from local to regional);
• change of context of country studied (for example, to a more or less economically developed country);
• change of context of issue and consequently, of values and attitudes involved (for example, from an issue concerning the change of function of a building to an issue about the development of farmland for sand and gravel extraction).

These three aspects of progression are not mutually exclusive; change of one often involves change of another.

Teachers can intervene by:

• providing more examples, and more difficult and complex resources, to ensure that a set task demands greater analysis and/or synthesis;
• giving pupils the opportunity to work more independently by reducing the degree of their own involvement in planning work;
• helping pupils to translate knowledge and understanding from one curriculum area or subject to inform their work in another (for example, bringing understanding of scientific processes to geographical issues like global warming and holes in the ozone layer).

Increasing depth of knowledge, skills and understanding

The QCA/DfES schemes of work for geography at key stages 1, 2 and 3 include:

• expectations for gifted pupils;
• tasks specifically designed to challenge gifted pupils.

The following examples demonstrate how some tasks require increasing depth of knowledge and understanding (italicised text is taken directly from the schemes of work).

At key stage 1, the whole of unit 17 'Global Eye' is designed for more able children.

At key stage 3, year 8, unit 11 'Investigating Brazil -- How did Brazil get like this? Why did it happen?' includes a summary task that is demanding and challenging.
Ask (pupils) to summarise their finding in a piece of explanatory writing entitled 'Brazil is a melting pot of many different cultures' or 'Brazil's distinctive character owes much to other cultures'. Even more able pupils are likely to need support to tackle this.

At key stage 3, year 9, unit 16 'What is development -- How do we measure development and identify differences?'
It may be appropriate to discuss with higher-attaining pupils some of the causes of differences in states of development.
ICT: as an extension activity, pupils could access additional case study material via the internet, eg information about particular TNCs (trans-national companies). This could lead on to an evaluative case study of a particular TNC.

Whether or not schools are using the schemes of work, it might be helpful for teachers to think about the sorts of questions they should be asking in respect of geographical understanding. At key stage 3, these might include:

• What understanding of this topic/unit do I expect gifted pupils to be able to achieve?
• In what ways would their understanding go beyond that of other pupils?
• To which relevant concepts might they be introduced?
• What qualities of understanding of this concept should I look for?
• What links between relevant concepts could the pupils usefully explore?
• Can key ideas be placed within a structured network of ideas that gifted pupils could understand?
• Would understanding involve the ability to explain? If so, what sort of explanation would be appropriate, and what forms of reasoning are required?
• Can the new ideas be related to pupils' experience? In what ways can they best be illustrated?
• How can pupils be encouraged and helped to apply ideas to other situations?
• To what extent are gifted pupils being challenged to deal with appropriate levels of complexity, abstraction and precision?

Teachers could use their answers to these questions to underpin decisions about the information that pupils acquire, the teaching methods and learning activities that might be effective, and the formative assessment that would be appropriate (irrespective of which course or scheme the school or department is following).

Improving the quality of response and outcomes

The quality of pupils' responses and outcomes can be improved through the development of an enquiry approach to geographical work. In this approach, gifted pupils are given increasing autonomy for organising their work and the teacher moves away from providing direct instruction to act as a facilitator or consultant. Teacher guidance may need to be prominent at first, gradually reducing as pupils have greater autonomy. The final stage is reached when pupils are independently able to:

• make decisions about geographically-appropriate sources of information, strategies for data collection, forms of analysis, and cartographic and symbolic ways of presenting findings;
• develop and use a range of practical skills, techniques or equipment to collect and process data from primary and secondary sources;
• analyse the collected data and draw conclusions and possible implications;
• reflect and comment appropriately on the effectiveness of the enquiry and the validity of the conclusions;
• show initiative, imagination and independence of judgement.

Managing provision in the general guidance

Matching teaching to pupils' needs in the general guidance

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