Improving the quality of examination style answers to raise the attainment of lower ability pupil premium boys in the subject of Geography.

Rationale This group of boys are particularly vulnerable to underachievement at GCSE level when their answers to questions lack detail and use of Geographical vocabulary within them. The action research undertaken aims to address these issues with specific Y9 boys to ensure that they have clear understanding of what they need to do in order to achieve more detail in their Geographical answers ready for their progression onto GCSE level courses.

Research Questions RQ1: What do lower ability boys at Leyway school think of writing in Geography? RQ2: What do teachers at ‘Leyway School’ do in order to improve lower ability, PP boys writing? RQ3: To what extent did different modelling strategies improve lower ability PP boys Geographical answers at Leyway school?

Initial findings RQ1: They like writing but sometimes they struggle to start. However, this was dependent on the time of day and if they had other written lessons beforehand. RQ2: Strict discipline to ensure instructions can be followed, low stakes testing, differentiated models, sentence starters, frameworks, key words. RQ3: Models improved answers, lower ability, pupil premium boys wrote more and had an understanding of how to explain their point a little further, they started to link in the key words from the topic into their answers. TBC…..