#45 Reveal answers one at a time to direct focus
If you don't, your students might be thinking about something else
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💡 A tip to try in class this week 💡
Recently I was watching a Year 7 maths lesson where the students were working on the following set of questions:
Through her circulation, the teacher had picked up that some students were struggling with Question 6 as they were not lining the digits up properly.
The teacher projected all the answers on the board and told students to mark their answers with a green pen:
She then proceeded to address Question 6.
But there was a problem. Her students’ attention was elsewhere. Some were still doing the marking. Others were discussing their answers to other questions with their partner. The explanation the teacher gave to Question 6 was not heard by many of her students.
The lesson here is a simple one. What is visible is what students are likely to be paying attention to. So, if there is a particular question and answer we want students attending to, it is a sensible idea to remove anything else.
The easiest way to do this is to reveal just one answer at a time, so students’ attention is firmly focused on the current question. An even more powerful way - although you might need to be an animation whizz - is to ensure only the current question and answer are visible to prevent students’ attention from wandering back to previous questions.
What do you think of this idea?
What would you need to change to make this tip work for you?
When could you try it for the first time?
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