Episode #3
High Expectations, Full Participation and the Power of Success
Learn more about The Story of Maths and ACEL Pro - www.alta-education.com/tsom-overview and https://www.acel.pro For maths curriculum questions contact us here or via support@alta-education.com Get your tickets for the TDaPE Conference Edinburgh Maths PD Dublin, Belfast, Cardiff, Glasgow - https://alta-education.com/cpd-tour-26-27/ For show notes, links, and a summary episode, sign up for the Hey! What You Reading For newsletter. Mondays at 7am BST - https://tdape.beehiiv.com/subscribe AI For Teachers newsletter Episode 312: Kylie Hoey has a simple rule in her classroom: no one opts out. But that comes with a responsibility. If she expects every pupil to participate, she has to give every pupil a genuine chance of succeeding. In this episode, Kylie joins Kieran to talk about the small decisions that make that possible. She explains why she deliberately engineers early success for pupils who have learned to expect failure, how she creates a classroom where getting something wrong is safe, and why maintaining high expectations is very different from simply demanding more. Kylie’s own route into evidence-informed teaching began when she found herself teaching older pupils who could not read and realised she did not know how to help them. What followed was a deep dive into reading, explicit instruction and the classroom practices she now uses and shares with other teachers. The conversation moves from full participation and maths fluency to modelling, coaching and teacher development. Kylie describes seeing teachers transform when they are shown what is possible with their own class, including one who had been ready to leave the profession. There is also a challenge for schools. Kylie argues that we can be too quick to reach for intervention before asking whether pupils are receiving strong enough whole-class teaching in the first place. In her analogy, there is little point worrying about the supplement if the main meal is not good enough. This is a conversation about high expectations, but also about what teachers have to do to make those expectations achievable.
