ABSTRACT
How can we help our most able students from all backgrounds and starting points achieve academic excellence? This chapter offers twenty-one practical ways to shape a whole school culture, such as how and why teachers need to focus on longer-term narrative arcs, model academic language, talk about what supports positive self-concept in students, consolidate and accredit previous learning, teach to the top and go ‘off-piste’, define appropriate levels of progress, investigate a variety of narratives, normalise extended responses, plan in ambiguity, complexity and doubt, and deliberately set up productive failure. These strategies are examined in detail and suggestions are made about the best ways to implement them in a classroom and across a school.
