Embrace uncertainty: leave students grappling

“I wasn’t sure the students knew the answers to your questions,” I was once told in lesson-observation feedback. “It was like they were… grappling.”“Isn’t the word ‘grapple’ literally in the Ofsted descriptor for outstanding?” I asked.It was. And it still is there in the handbook; a brilliant image. I imagine a student hanging from a rockface by his fingertips, flailing for another handhold.For me, alarm bells are triggered when I see a classroom full of confident hands thrust up into the air. At that point, you have found the lowest common denominator, removed all challenge, and reinforced that certainty is desirable. But I have a fantasy… I imagine a classroom full of hands raised with thirty different questions; of a culture where curiosity and uncertainty have been kindled into a blaze.