It is tempting when thinking about boys’ achievement to focus on teaching and learning, but there is a stage before that to consider. When we have so much choice at KS1 it is worth pondering on which topics, which famous people and which famous events, have most boy-appeal. Many of the primary and infant schools I have worked with have found that boys’ motivation soared when they started to spend longer on topics such as the Moon Landing and the Sinking of the Titanic, and Scott of the Antarctic and dwindled when looking at Toys, Homes, and Florence Nightingale!
It is hard to think of a teaching and learning strategy that one would use with boys and not with girls. We all know that boys seem to like more active approaches, but so would many girls. When I analyse the research evidence, it seems to me to conceal more than it reveals.
So I am thrown back on my own experience of working in infant classrooms with teachers for nearly twenty years. In that time I have found perhaps six or seven examples when I really saw the learning of infant boys accelerate because a particular strategy was chosen. None of
