#67 Be careful with questions that have more then one correct answer
If you want a quick check for understading, they can cause problems
Hello, and welcome to the Tips for Teachers newsletter.
I have 7 free websites
I write 2 free weekly newsletters
I host 2 free podcasts
I share over 200 free CPD videos
If you find my work useful, please consider becoming a Patreon
💡 A tip to try in class this week 💡
Recently I observed a lesson that contained the following question in the Do Now:
Write all the factors of 12
It’s a good question. What could possibly go wrong?
Students were asked to show their answers on their mini-whiteboards. And that is where the problems started. There were 30 students in the class, and each student had around 6 pieces of data on their boards - some had more as they had written some erroneous factors, and some had less as they had forgotten some factors. So, the teacher needed to process nearly 200 pieces of data in the 5 seconds that her students’ boards were in the air. Impossible. Her job was made even more difficult because students had written their numbers in a variety of orders - some had paired up the factors, others had written the numbers in ascending order - in a variety of sizes, in a variety of positions on their mini-whiteboards.
The teacher did all she could, which was to focus her attention on one or two boards and make assumptions about the understanding of the rest of the class based on this. In other words, the benefits of a tool of mass participation like the mini-whiteboard were significantly reduced.
What could she have done instead?
She could have been more clear about how she wanted the answer laid out:
I want your answers written nice and big, and match each number up with its factor pair, starting with the smallest factor.
She could reduce the flow of information by only asking to see the boards of the students in the back row, then the middle row, and so on.
But there’s probably still too much data for her to take in.
Another option is to change the question so there is just one answer. So, something like:
What is the smallest factor of 12?
What is the largest factor of 12?
Which factor of 12 pairs up with 3?
Is 0 a factor of 12?
Is 1.5 a factor of 12?
And so on…
Of course, she does not need to limit herself to asking just one of these questions - once mini-whiteboard routines are in place, the checks can be so quick that you can ask several questions over the span of a minute. However, the key point is that for each of these questions, she would have had a much better chance of seeing all her students’ responses because she is now checking 30 pieces of data as opposed to nearly 200.
Of course, questions with multiple answers have a key role to play in the classroom. We just need to think carefully about how we will assess them, and a quick-fire retrieval Do Now is probably not the place for them.
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?
View more than 200 Tips for Teachers
🏃🏻♂️Before you go, have you… 🏃🏻♂️
… tried last week’s tip about checking students are listening to each other?
… read my latest Eedi newsletter about the I Do phase of a lesson?
… listened to my latest podcast with Kris Boulton about Atomisation?
… read my Tips for Teachers book?
… considered booking some CPD, coaching or maths department support?