#56 Try these four different ways of going through the answers

All of them will be more effective than correcting in green pen

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💡 A tip to try in class this week 💡

Imagine students have been working on a set of questions like these:

We now want to go through the answers. How should we do it? In 9 out of 10 lessons I see, the teacher either projects the answers on the board, models how to do them, or asks students via Cold Call or hands-up. Students are then told to tick the ones they got right, and correct the ones they got wrong, usually with a green or purple pen.

I have written previously about why I think this approach does not work. But if we are not going to review the answers to independent practice in this way, then what are we going to do?

Here are four options:

1. Book-to-Board

Choose one or two critical questions - these could be ones you have picked out in advance, or ones you have seen students struggling with whilst you have been circulating. Ask students to copy their final answer for one of those questions from their books to their mini-whiteboards and show you in 3, 2, 1. This will immediately give you a sense of whole-class participation and understanding for that question. And if the final answer does not give you enough information, then you can ask students to clean their boards and copy down just the first step of working, show you, then the second step, and so on. This allows you to diagnose exactly where students are struggling.

For more on my Book-to-Board approach, click here.

2. The Tick Trick

The Tick Trick is a strategy from Adam Boxer, and I love it. When going through the answer to a question, you allocate ticks for specific things you want to see in students’ answers. For example, a tick for units, for lining up your equals sign, for writing the operation you are doing, for writing a sentence to answer the question. You then asks students how many ticks they got. The Tick Trick forces students to focus on their working out and not just the final answer.

I discuss the Tick Trick with Ollie Lovell here.

3. Cold Call Bounce

Cold Call is great for hearing the response of one student. But where is the incentive for the rest of the class to keep listening? This is where Cold Call Bounce comes into play. When going through an answer to a question, Cold Call one student to say the first step in the solution, then bounce it to another student to either repeat what the first student just said (a check for listening), to reflect on what they just said (a check for listening and a check of understanding), or to say the next step in the solution (a check for understanding). Involving several students in each answer, and asking both checks for listening and checks for understanding questions, means that students have an incentive to keep listening and thinking even if they have not been selected initially.

4. Call and Respond

For answers that require only a single word or a short phrase, Call and Respond is great. So, you might say: Everyone, which operation do we do first, multiply, divide, add, or subtract, 3, 2, 1… or: Everyone, what is our go-to strategy when solving a quadratic equation, 3, 2, 1… Call and Respond is quicker than getting students to write their answers on mini-whiteboards, more inclusive than Cold Call, and students also love it.

Using one or more of these techniques when going through answers should help drive up the participation ratio and give you a more reliable sense of your students’ understanding than asking students to correct with a green pen will do.

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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🏃🏻‍♂️Before you go, have you… 🏃🏻‍♂️

1. … tried last week’s tip about hiding your tell when calling upon students to explain their thinking?

2. … read my latest Eedi newsletter about 10 tips to supercharge Intelligent Practice?

3. … listened to my latest podcast about feedback cycles, lesson observations and Exit Tickets?

4. … read my Tips for Teachers book?

5. … considered booking some CPD, coaching or maths department support?

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