This article appears as part of the Lessons to Learn newsletter.

A couple of years ago, I took a trip to a primary school in Glasgow to observe an experiment.

I stood in a classroom of primary 4 and 5 pupils at St Marnock’s, watching as they worked their way through a series of tasks built around understanding the ways in which different shapes relate to one another, and how they can be combined to create new objects.

The pupils started by creating six-pointed stars with smaller shapes, and moved on to forming different types of triangles using items like rhombuses.

I watched some go through a process of physical trial and error, placing and shifting the base shapes in pursuit of their goal, while others seemed to be able to do a lot of that in their minds before completing the task in what otherwise might have looked like a simple, single step.

In amongst all this activity, the pupils were being encouraged to talk to each other, explain their ideas, and try to work out solutions. Their teacher asked questions designed to make them really think not just about what they were doing, but also the broader implications for their learning.

The lessons weren’t designed to pour knowledge into their little heads, or train them to produce the correct answer to a set of questions. The goal was to support a much deeper kind of understanding.

Why? Because the........

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