Mike is teaching his class how to translate Spanish sentences about different types of transportation. Following his explanation, he has prepared a Check for Understanding (CfU) consisting of 8 slides, each one with a different sentence on it. The sentences cover a range of different scenarios and sentence constructions. He displays the first one, and asks students to write their answers on a mini-whiteboard (MWB) before hovering the boards and showing him on 3, 2, 1. Students do quite well, but a lot of them get question 6 wrong (“I always ride a bike to school”). He takes a couple of MWBs up to the front, uses Cold Call to discuss the mistakes that have been made and reteaches the correct translations before moving on to the next question.

As ever, we start with the good:

  • Mike has prepared a Check for Understanding – I am very blessed in that I get to observe lessons in lots of different schools. In at least 80% of lessons I have seen, the teacher has not prepared a proper CfU. They might ask if students understand, or they might ask a couple of questions to individual students, but very often there is no CfU at all.
  • Mike has staggered the questions for the CfU – sometimes I see people put questions on the board all at once. When you do this, students will automatically start answering all of them. They will then be less likely to be listening when you ask for responses to an individual question or when you are giving feedback (this is then evidenced by unexpected answers).
  • Mike has written down the questions – questions written down are almost always better than ones which are verbally posed, especially if they are long or if students need to carefully analyse a sentence or statement, as the information just leaves their head if it is only put out verbally.
  • Mike does not talk over the slide – as soon as the words are on the board, students are looking at and reading them. Mike does not need to read them out, and therefore does not distract them with redundant information.
  • Mike uses a range of questions – sometimes I see questions that are extremely similar to each other. Such a sequence can rapidly become too easy for learning to take place and may encourage an algorithmic approach to answering. Additionally, it doesn’t really check student understanding, as it is only checking one small aspect of the lesson content, and could potentially ignore much else.
  • Mike uses MWBs – why collect one answer when you can collect 30?
  • Mike uses a good MWB routine – the hover/show strategy means that students are less likely to copy answers and Mike will get more reliable information about student understanding.
  • Mike notices that a large number of students got a particular question wrong – sometimes teachers do the MWB thing, but then don’t notice that a lot of students are getting stuff wrong. Take a few extra seconds to check more boards, and have an idea in your head of the number of correct responses you expect to see before deciding to reteach.
  • Mike does a proper reteach – don’t be tempted to summarise the correct answer in a cursory way “ah ok, we got that one wrong. Remember we need to do x and y to make sure we get the answer which was z.” If they don’t get it, they don’t get it, and your explanation probably needs to be closer in depth and length to the way you initially explained it earlier on in the lesson (or in a previous lesson).
  • Mike used Show Call to discuss wrong answers – taking boards up to the front allows Mike to dissect student responses, but also communicate to students that he is checking each of their boards in detail, thereby building Ratio. It’s also better to show it to the students than just read it out as we saw above, it means that the information isn’t ephemeral or transitory, and students can take the time needed to analyse it.
  • Mike used Cold Call during the discussion – using Cold Call means Mike can be a bit more nimble and quick with his questioning than using MWBs for every single response, but it also allows him to build Ratio and collect good data through targeting questions.

We should take none of this for granted. Mike has done a lot, and each of his actions would have been easy to skip or miss. As we have seen previously, these actions make a big difference, but you only notice them if you are looking for them.

When I observed this lesson, however, it seemed to me that Mike had missed a step. Using the Hypothesis Model for lesson observation, I wanted to test my suspicions, so as soon as the CfU was over I took a MWB for myself, and wrote I always ride a bike to school along the top of it (i.e. the question they got wrong). I then (quietly) went to a student at random and asked them to translate the sentence onto the board. I took a photo of the board, rubbed clear their answer and then went to four more students at random to do the same thing. Out of the five students I went to, four got it wrong, and one got it right.

On the face of it, this might seem perplexing. Sure, they got it wrong first time, but Mike did a very thorough job of noticing and reteaching it when they did – and we praised that as good practice. It seems, however, that this was not enough. From what I’ve seen in lessons, there appear to be a number of levels to an effective CfU:

Level 1: planning and doing a CfU
Level 2: noticing widespread error
Level 3: reteaching widespread error thoroughly

Some lessons don’t have level 1. Some have level 1 but not level 2. Some have level 2 but not level 3. Mike did all 3 levels, but the level he missed was:

Level 4: check their understanding again

After his reteach, Mike should have given a series of follow-ups along the same lines of I always ride a bike to school. He might have substituted “always” for “never” or “sometimes”, “ride a bike” for “get a bus” or “school” for “church” or “the park.” The possibilities are endless, but he didn’t do it, so even though students might have listened and nodded or whatever, the lack of follow-up checking and practice meant that they couldn’t consolidate this new knowledge.

As with the other levels, this re-check level is often missed. In this case, for two reasons:

  1. Our natural inclination is always to assume that students have “got it.” As experts, it’s hard to put ourselves in students’ shoes, and it just seems impossible that they wouldn’t get it. This underlies the reason why many lessons miss a CfU entirely, but it is especially pronounced in this case. Our subconscious says to us “I’ve taught it to them once already, and now I just did it all over again, they definitely get it now.” But our subconscious is often wrong, and we need to make a concerted effort to check, check and check again.
  2. Mike – as with most teachers – had planned his lesson and his CfU out as a slideshow. To an extent, this dictates the path of the lesson in advance: first we do this, then we do this, then we do this. There isn’t much wiggle room without changing your primary method of presentation – if you are using a slideshow then you need to get out a pen and write on it, or find another board, or close it and start typing or the like. Whatever you do, you end up having to make quite a big change, and this often doesn’t happen. This is a classic drawback of teaching via PowerPoint or other presentation software, and if you are going to use it you need, as above, to be conscious of the drawbacks and make concerted efforts to mitigate them. In your head, you need to think “if they get this, move to the next slide. If they get it wrong, then I will ask x, y and z before moving to the next slide.”

When I followed up with Mike, I said to him “ok, given that they got it wrong, what questions could you have asked to follow up?” and in seconds he had reeled off half a dozen. We all have the expertise to respond adequately to student misunderstanding as it emerges, but we need to make a conscious effort in order to actually do it.

Essentially, that statement of “if they get it wrong, then…” should permanently be reverberating around your head. It should be woven through the fabric of your lessons, and you should be constantly aware of the fact that lessons rarely follow a neat and pre-ordained path of learning, and more often than not feature unpredictable diversions.

Your diversions might include reteaching, rechecking for understanding or giving more practice. They lead you to revisit entire other areas of the curriculum. They might involve you saying “ah you guys didn’t get that, I am going to take a note and revisit it at a later date so I can plan for it.” Whatever it is, be prepared, and always be ready to finish the sentence if they get it wrong, then I will…