The ‘intangible’ skills: SLANT and SHAPE

^{A bi-weekly T&L bulletin for staff at Community Schools Trust}

In this BBC Two documentary on ‘How to break into the elite’, we meet Amaan. In many ways, Amaan is very much like one of our students. He comes from an economically disadvantaged background, he is the first person to go to university in his family and he is bright and capable. 

Much academic research shows that a class pay gap still exists today. People from a poorer background who go to university and get a First Class honours degree will earn less than people from a privileged background who go to the same university and get a 2:2 (Friedman and Laurison, 2019). There are of course, huge implications to this. 

Amaan – like many of our students – will achieve everything that society expects of people like him, yet when Amaan attends a job interview, he crumbles. 

He stutters, mixes up his words, is breathless and completely loses the easy confidence with which he can speak in lots of other settings he is familiar with. Why is this?

In the documentary, journalist and broadcaster Amol Rajan explores the term ‘confidence’ – derived from the Latin, ‘fidere’ which means ‘to trust’. 

Like Amaan, we see our students brimming with confidence in many of their settings – around their friends, their teachers, in extra curricular settings.

But in the unfamiliar setting of the job interview, Amaan appears to lose his confidence completely. 

In the documentary, Rajan reflects: ‘Maybe if you’re someone from a private school you feel confident in any arena because you feel like society validates the way you look and behave. Whereas, if you’re someone from a poorer background…, maybe you kind of…you don’t feel safe.’ 

‘You feel like an outsider. An imposter, basically. Very few imposters feel confident.’

We know our students will go on to encounter unfamiliar settings in their lives – college and job interviews, unfamiliar social settings, work placements and so on. 

At the start of my career, I know I certainly felt this unfamiliarity when attending work placements and interviews. When entering such settings, I found myself being super conscious of how different I looked to those around me. In interviews, I was suddenly extremely conscious of my accent.

Even in recent years where I have certainly grown in confidence, when I attended my first NPQH workshop, I was suddenly transported back to those initial feelings of uncertainty and self consciousness. 

I know this will resonate with many like myself. I know many of the students we teach are likely to go on to experience this too. As their teachers, how well are we equipping them for this?

Amaan’s articulation of his performance was particularly poignant for me: … ‘it’s the little things here and there… the intangible skills are something which I’ve had to force my way there myself.’

It’s the little things here and there…the intangible skills

At CST we use the strategies SLANT (Habits of Attention) and SHAPE as a standard part of our classroom practice. 

Adapted from Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion (TLAC), SLANT stands for: sit up straight, listen carefully, ask and answer questions, never interrupt and track the speaker.

Introduced to us by Barry Smith, SHAPE stands for: speak in full sentences, hands away from the mouth, articulate, don’t mumble, project your voice and eye contact.

Their most fundamental purpose is to ensure learning is taking place in the classroom. We already have excellent knowledge rich curriculums which we continue to perfect. These two strategies essentially support the implementation of our curriculums. SLANT maximises the attention a student gives to what is being taught. SHAPE is a great tool to check for understanding and provide the crucial antecedents one needs in a classroom environment to maximise learning. 

As a result of doing these things well, the skills our young people develop from these two strategies are precisely the ‘little things here and there…the intangible skills’ that Amaan had to figure out for himself.

Consider the opposite of these skills for a moment:

SLANT	SHAPE
Slouch	Speak in fragment / short sentences
Don’t listen	Hands in front of mouth
Don’t engage/stay silent/passive	Mumble
Interrupt	Muted voice
Ignore the speaker	No eye contact

If a child slouches or interrupts someone, it is forgivable. An adult who slouches, interrupts you, appears not to listen… these behaviours are much less forgivable. In fact, they are judged and the implications of this are huge – job prospects, college prospects, social group acceptance and so on.

These are skills which set our students up for life, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Those who possess them already, won’t necessarily be conscious of them. But those who don’t, will certainly become aware of this fact beyond school. 

But by then it is too late. Now’s the time to be conscious of them – whilst they’re still learning. Whilst it’s still forgivable. 

With SLANT and SHAPE, we have made those ‘intangible skills’ tangible. 

When we deploy these strategies, we absolutely expect our students to comply with our expectations. When they don’t, we use our systems to correct their behaviour. 

A new term, a new opportunity to perfect

Do not be afraid or reluctant to insist on the highest of standards when it comes to enforcing these strategies. First and foremost, know that these strategies maximise learning.

If they are SLANTing, they are paying attention to your expert teaching. If they are paying attention, they are more likely to remember the knowledge you are imparting. 

If they are SHAPEing, they are demonstrating their understanding to you, their peers are learning from listening and the social validation they receive also means high levels of motivation to learn in your lessons. 

A happy byproduct of the above means that our young people who are conscious now of those ‘intangible’ skills, by the time they leave us, will be able to deploy them unconsciously.

A new term brings with it brand new opportunities to perfect these practices in our classrooms.

Reflect on how well SLANT and SHAPE are embedded with your classes. Now’s the time to perfect something that is so important for the students we serve. Of course there is so much more that is contributing to the persisting class pay gap but perhaps we can go some way into combatting those challenges that Amaan battled with and help to level the playing field for our young people.

Thahmina