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Delayed gratification in LTE

Tom Leigh, long time LTE teacher reflects upon the different mode created in Let’s Think in English lessons.

I have been teaching Let’s Think in English for over a decade now, and for the majority of my career this has been in upper key stage 2, and year 6 in particular. I distinctly remember the first moment I fell in love with teaching LTE. I was a bright eyed, energetic NQT (as it was then) with a love of English, but I had yet to find what I was really looking for in English lessons. I think it was that ‘getting lost in a book’ feeling… when the eyes glaze over… when the child leaves the real world and enters the imaginary. In the old days they called it, ‘awe and wonder’. These days they call it, “Blimey… they are engaged!”
The first lesson I taught was ‘Lulu’. The Charles Causley poem, “What has happened to Lulu?” is written almost entirely in question form, and hints at something happening to Lulu, without ever letting on the full details. I remember reading the poem, trying not to give away my own reading of it by staying as neutral in tone as possible, which was part of the training. When I teach now, my internal ‘teacher’ dialogic is still constantly reminding me, “Don’t guide their thinking to your ideas, no right answers, don’t praise what they say overtly – it stops them thinking, the best praise is the taking up of the idea by their peers.” The training provided lots of small teacher ‘moves’ like this, tips that only really make sense when discussed face to face, rather than written on a guide online. I finished the poem, and then asked the first question, What has happened to Lulu?
A moment of silence… contemplation… then the groups of three burst into talk, testing out ideas, changing them, agreeing, confirming, challenging, and building upon their initial thoughts. They talked passionately about these ideas, and their eyes were glazed. They weren’t ‘performing’. They really wanted to say what they thought. They really wanted to listen to each other. They really wanted to ‘think’. And it was me who felt the awe and wonder.
Many years later, teaching Let’s Think still feels this. This year though, for the first time in my career, I am teaching year 4 in lower key stage 2. These days, and at risk of sounding like a grumpy old timer, you hear a lot of teachers (and parents) discussing the fact that it seems children’s attention spans are shorter. But it’s evident in the classroom. Many are more demanding of quick input and wanting instant reward. They talk to each other in memes, and flit between subjects of conversation naturally and easily. Many impulsively verbalise their thoughts, and discuss things as they are happening, not after. They struggle to listen for any lengthy period of time, and they seem to find it more difficult to listen to each other’s ideas, preferring to focus on their own. There is a certain competition, a need to be first, to be noticed more than others, to not want to wait.
I can feel the development difference Piaget delineated – they are more egocentric, they struggle to wait for attention and they compete for it. They battle with great ferocity to be the first in line when it comes to lining up for… well… anything! They also find it harder to move from their own perspective, to move on from their first thought. They often find it more difficult to abstract from their own concrete understanding, to generalise, to find themes and links. They are also extraordinarily fidgety, and incredibly adept and constructing complex buildings from stationery… but they are also harder to impress. Harder to surprise.
However, when we do Let’s Think, it’s different. They somehow move into a different mode. They are calmer, and listen more attentively. They still burst from contemplative silence into passionate discussion and idea building. They construct their ideas more carefully and build on each other’s. And they really like it. They enjoy Let’s Think, a lot.
Why? It doesn’t offer them instant reward. It isn’t split into short seven-second chunks. There aren’t even any rulers to make bridges out of. It made me think of that ‘awe and wonder’ thing. Maybe that happens when something is ‘new’. Something they haven’t seen before, something that isn’t easily assimilated. I was thinking about our Science topic on ‘Sound’. Kids aren’t as easily impressed by technology any more. The decibel meter wasn’t a moment of excitement. The YouTube videos on amazing sounds were passé. But the cup and string… that was properly exciting.
I wonder if maybe the mode of a Let’s Think lesson, a slowing down, a thoughtful contemplation in a social environment, feels ‘new’ to them. Maybe they experience it differently because it doesn’t instantly gratify, there is no right answer to check at a marking station, they can take their time together to form ideas. Crucially I think, they have time to predict. They can form those predictions carefully from the evidence available, and their wider knowledge of the world. They do it together, and then they get the pay-off of seeing if they were right, (though they often enjoy it most if they aren’t, because they are surprised!) Even if they aren’t rewarded with the truth, as is the case in “What’s happened to Lulu”, they are rewarded by their peers building on their ideas, or seeing that their idea was worthy of challenge. They also do it together, in collaboration. There isn’t a race, it’s a shared progression of thinking. Not one person’s opinion matters more, and rather the idea itself is most important. It’s we think, and a question of do we agree?
It begs a question, if children’s brains are in some part being re-wired by their social environment, how ought we to respond? Should we teach lessons in short chunks, feed their instant reward systems, or should we expose them to a ‘slowing down’, a more thoughtful mode. Time to stand and stare. Maybe both are right, but one thing’s for certain, they still really like Let’s Think lessons, and so do I.