We Do

Before we dive into the We Do, we need to establish exactly what it is. By the We Do, I mean the first question students answer after the worked example, and it is answered collaboratively. Some teachers call this the You Do.

Diagnosis

Think about your most recent We Do:

1. What did you do?
2. What did your students do?
3. What challenges did you face?

Evidence

Research suggests that active student responses during instruction can improve behaviour and enhance learning.

In the previous section, I argued that the most appropriate form of student response during the I Do is to check for listening. This helps gives us a measure – and help increase – student attention. However, after completing the I Do, we must gauge our students’ understanding.

That is where the We Do comes in.

In many of the maths lessons I watch, the We Do does not happen. It is either:

1. Skipped out completely as the lesson progresses from the explanation to independent practice.
2. Combined with the I Do, resulting in a hybrid explanation/check for understanding that is the worst of both words:

When Ollie Lovell asked researcher Dr Anita Aracher what the single biggest mistake teachers make is, she replied: Under utilising the “We Do”!

Dr Archer went on to explain:

Once we have modelled the expert’s thinking process, our goal is to then step students through the expert’s thinking process. It is usually too big of a jump from seeing an expert perform to performing like an expert oneself. This is where ‘We do’ comes in.

A sure sign of an ineffective or absent We Do is the number of hands that go up as soon as the Consolidation phase has started. The We Do should adequately prepare students for the practice that follows and help us diagnose exactly which students need our support before they tell us.

Solution steps

Part 1: Where does the We Do fit into a lesson?

In a previous section, I shared three possible lesson structures:

Lesson Structure #1

Lesson Structure #2

Lesson Structure #3

In each structure, the We Do is the bridge between an explanation and independent practice.

• The We Do comes immediately after the I Do as it provides evidence as to whether our worked example has made sense to our students.
• The We Do comes before Consolidation to prepare our students for the practice task and to give us information about which students need our support.

Part 2: The choice of question

We have discussed the importance of example choice during the I Do. We also need to think carefully about the question we use for our We Do.

To put it simply, it needs to test the same skill as the I Do, but still require some thinknig.

Here are some examples of We Dos that do not follow this guidance:

The key thing the teacher wanted students to focus on during the I Do was selecting the correct multiplier to find a given percentage of an amount. The same percentage is used in the We Do, so this skill is not tested.

The problem with the 3 questions that comprised the We Do is they follow the same pattern as the 3 examples in the I Do. Hence, answering them becomes an exercise in pattern spotting instead of having the think hard about where the dots need to be placed.

These two We Dos have the opposite problem – they are too different from the I Dos. The first We Do is not the place to add in twsits, it is there to assess whether students have followed the concept at the heart of the I Do.

Here is another example of this. Notice how the We Do involves double-rounding, whereas the I Do does not. The place for such extensions is either during Consolidation or – as we shall see below – later on in a sequence of We Dos.

Part 3: Board set-up

Often I see the I Do on one slide, and the We Do on the next:

This is a mistake. Students need the I Do to remain visible whilst they work on the We Do so they can use it for support. Then, when you gfo through the answer, you can draw their attention to similarities and differences.

My preferred board set-up is this:

This works equally well under the visualiser:

One final point: Do not reveal the We Do until the I Do has been completed. This ensures students’ attention remains on the I Do instead of wandering off to the next question.

Part 4: Use Step-by-Step

Once we have chosen a good question for our We Do and set up our board, we must assess our students’ ability to answer it. I often see the teacher asking for volunteers or Cold Calling a student. This is a mistake. Why get one data point when we can get 30 and thus get a more reliable measure of our class’ understanding? Seeing the response of all students to a question is important at any stage of a lesson, but especially during the We Do, as it is our first opportunity to see if our explanation has made any sense.

I know of no more efficient way to see the responses of all students to the We Do than to use mini-whiteboards.

However, if we ask students to answer the full We Do on their mini-whiteboards and then show us the answer, we may find it difficult to diagnose any issues.

Here is an example from a recent lesson:

And here are the responses of four students:

Can you diagnose where each student has gone wrong?

More importantly, can you diagnose the issues in the time mini-whiteboards are usually in the air – say, 5 seconds – and to this for another 26 students?

The solution is to use Step-by-Step:

1. Ask students to write one step of their solution on their mini-whiteboards at a time
2. Assess this
3. Respond if needed
4. Write the correct step on our board
5. Ask students to write the next step
6. And so on…

Let’s look at an example:

First, the teacher asked students to write down how to calculate the percentage multiplier:

Students were fine with this, so the teacher wrote that part of the solution on his board and then asked students to write down the calculation they would do next:

Again, this caused no issues, so having written up that part of the solution, the teacher asked students to complete the calculation on their calculators and show their final answer:

I like using Step-by-Step for the We Do for two reasons:

1. You can diagnose exactly where in the process students are struggling and intervene accordingly
2. Students experience more moments of success

Part 5: Option: Use the Tick Trick

When students come to do Consolidation work in their books, they often stop setting it out the way you have asked them.

This teacher asked students to set out their answers exactly as he had:

Let’s see what happened:

This teacher did the same, asking students to sketch and label each of the faces to support the calculation of surface area:

Let’s see if students followed his advice when they came to do the Consolidation work:

The solution here is to give students a second We Do to answer, and use Adam Boxer’s Tick Trick.

Unlike the first We Do, students answer the second We Do in their books, from start to finish, working at their own pace.

When it is time to go through the answer, you allocate ticks for each correct step of the solution:

Here is a teacher doing this for solving equations:

And here are two student books:

Notice how both students have the correct answer, but the student on the left has the most ticks because they have stuck to the method modelled by the teacher and not taken any shortcuts.

Here is another example:

And here are two student responses:

I like the Tick Trick for three reasons:

1. It forces students to look at their working out and not just the answer
2. It incentivises them to set their work out in the way you have asked
3. Students experience more moments of success
4. Students have an example in their book that they can refer to during the lesson

One final Tick Trick tip: Ask students to swap books and check each other’s work. This has several advantages:

1. It provides a more reliable check than if students are marking their own – I often see ticks being given when they shouldn’t),
2. It provides an extra incentive for students to set their work out correctly
3. Students get to see another student’s work

At the end of the process, you can say: Hands up if your partner got all the ticks. And then: Hands up if your partner lost one tick, and use this to diagnose where shortcuts are being taken, or mistakes are being made.

Part 6: Option: Ask a sequence of We Dos

Research suggests that a typical student needs about seven practice opportunities to reach mastery of a knowledge component. Of course, those practice opportunities could happen during Consolidation, but they could also occur during a sequence of We Dos, with students responding on mini-whiteboards.

Let’s imagine we are teaching our students how to multiply a single bracket. Our sequence of examples could look like this:

Or for adding fractions, it could look like this:

Or for multiplying with decimals it could look like this:

Notice there are three types of questions in the sequences:

1. What if: By making just one change, we focus student’s attention on a critical part of the procedure.
2. Reset: We test students’ ability to cope with multiple changes, all of which they have seen before.
3. Extension: We introduce something students have not yet been taught in a low-stakes way that, by changing just one thing from the previous example, maximises the chance of success.

A few pedagogical points:

1. Students answer each question on their mini-whiteboards
2. When introducing a What If I say to students: Change as little of your working out as possible. Students like this feel like less work, but of course, it also helps focus students’ attention on the chance that has occurred and its impact on their work and answer.
3. When introducing a Reset, I tell students to clean their boards
4. When introducing an Extension, I say: Now, I have not taught you how to do this next question. If you get it wrong, then it is my fault, not yours. No pressure at all, but let’s just give it a go. This keeps the stakes nice and low, increasing the proportion of students who are willing to have a go.
5. If the proportion of students getting the questions correct falls below 80% at any point in the sequence, I will stop, set the rest of the class off on Consolidation work, and support struggling students.
6. How far we get through the sequence determines the pitch of the Consolidation work that follows. Often, I can start students off with much more challenging questions because of how they have performed during this We Do sequence, setting us up to spend more time on problem-solving.

Not all procedures are suited to such a sequence. But when they work, they are magical. The pace is quick, engagement levels are high, and students feel successful.

Want to know more?

The following people have shared their approach to the We Do:

1. Michael Pershan explains how he uses What If questions
2. Craig Latimer explains how he uses mini-whiteboards and variations during the We Do

Implementation planning

Here are the ideas we have discussed:

1. Choice of question
2. Board set-up
3. Step-by-Step
4. Option: Use the Tick Trick
5. Option: Ask a sequence of We Dos

Use these ideas to complete the prioritisation exercise here.