More tips from Adam Boxer
Video transcript
all right let’s dive straight in what is your first tip um okay my first tip is to make sure students are ready to practice use mini whiteboards mini you love a mini whiteboard don’t you i love mini whiteboards have you always loved them no um i am in my ninth tenth something year of teaching and i only started using mini whiteboards about two years ago and they are now an integral part of my practice such the extent that i don’t know how i ever talk without them and not just that but um i don’t know how i would teach if i didn’t have them the very thought stresses me out what changed two years ago to make you start using them um so i joined my school in september when she was 21 this year’s was 20 2019 um and they were always something that i had sort of wanted to use but had never really got round to using them and i’ve been in a school where people had mini whiteboards but nobody used them and i got some feedback from my boss who is the best and keenest observer of teaching and learning i’ve ever had the privilege of working with and he basically just said to me like you asked a question to the students and you got an answer but like there were 25 kids in that room you could have got 25 answers if you just use mini white boards and i was like yeah but they’re such a faff and he didn’t say this in as many words but he was basically just like get over it and sort it out you know you’re a big boy you can work it out it’s not it’s not faff once you get used to them figure out a way to make it work in the physical space that you’ve got and just go for it and then i’ve never looked back well can you someone sum up as easily as you can how would you use them so talk us through a little scenario um so the there’s a physical routine that is associated with mini whiteboards which is and again the physical space is important because different classes have different setups um i have six rows i’ve got big room and i’ve got six rows and each row has one basket and in the basket is are enough mini white boards enough pens and enough rubbers for everyone on that row um and we we train so like in the first lesson when i want them to give an hour you know i explain which student is going to give them out i explain exactly which direction the basket is going to move down the table i tell students if they don’t have a pen they don’t just go like oh so i don’t have a pen they just put their hand up and wait and then i give the pens to another student to bring them around if there needs to be any spares uh and we get that down to a pretty fine art and most of my classes can now do it in less than 15 seconds in complete silence um and like one of my classes is 40 students right so that’s 40 million white boards out um within you know 15 seconds or so in complete silence can you just give me a sense how long has it taken to get to that stage is is that over a number of lessons of practice yeah like two lessons oh okay okay yeah and and even then like the first lesson is like 45 seconds yeah um so they get fast pretty quick and like to be honest i have i have a couple of very very tricky classes um and you know i’m headed department is my job to to try and help the rest of the department in that way um and so for some groups i’ll lay them out first yeah it takes a couple of minutes or or i’ll get the previous class to do the grunt labor i’ll just say leave the mini whiteboards on the desk where you are and i’ll just make sure they’re neat and tidy so that when the students come in they’re there ready so that we call it shaping the path you just minimize the chance for any kind of disruption or conflict to start um because like it never starts like problematic you know what you’ll have is a kid will be like oh i don’t have a pen and a kid from the road front will be like oh don’t worry i’ve got one in the basket and we’ll throw it at them right and again like like not not even necessarily disruptively right but they’ll just chuck them a pen and you know it’ll go wrong or whatever or the kid who receives it will make a fuss and before you know it you’ve just got chaos yeah right so you just you just shape the past and you just avoid that happening and yet some would say no the your responsibility to have high expectations expect that that won’t happen and give a consequence of it i’d like to forget that just like put them out before and it’ll be fine um and you know then people are like oh how do you stop the kids doodling on them so if the kid doodles on the mini whiteboards i make them stay afterwards and to clean all of the mini whiteboards and then they don’t doodle again if a kid draws a penis i will take the mini whiteboard and i’ll take a photo of it and email it to their mum right there and then like i’ve got i’ve got all the email addresses on my phone so like i’ll just do it and then they won’t do it again and they don’t do it again and like everybody laughs about it and it’s funny but they’re also like oh god that could have been me so i’d love to see your camera roll adam on your phone hey that must be tons of mini whiteboards with yeah genitalia uh no it’s i tend to delete them afterwards um it’s memory you’ve got to save the memory that’s why um so so yeah like you just you just work out different schools have different routines people are like oh how do you you know make sure every room has enough pens and i’m like it’s it’s like it’s like drinking water yeah nobody ever says how do you make sure you’ve got enough drinking water for your staff right like pens are on tap yeah if i if if a teacher needs many whiteboard pens they get them no questions asked yeah it’s like you know obviously they’re you know if you if i’ve got a class of teachers telling me there’s chaos in there kids are throwing the pens all over the place and then you have to put in a different intervention right but if the kids if the teacher needs more mini whiteboard pens because the kids are doing loads of mini whiteboard work it’d be ridiculous to say well i’m not buying those it’s like saying no i’m not paying for more exercise books yeah it would be insane so so many whiteboard pens are basically on tap um and other budget would move around that because there’s other stuff that is less necessary um so you know all these practical problems people like oh this that or the other i was that person uh but yeah it’s just uh can’t get over it because because it’s worth it okay so we’ve got the whiteboards they’re handed out the kids have got all the pens and everything just talk us through a scenario how you’d use them adam if that’s okay sure okay so um normally people talk about using them for checking for understanding um essentially anytime you want to know whether or not students understand something you use mini whiteboards because you can gather you know 30 times as much information it’s wild when you put it like that if you ask one kid something you get an answer but 30 times the information is is i don’t think people realize just how much bigger that is yeah that is an astonishingly large um jump it’s it’s it’s an order of magnitude multiplied by three it’s it’s crazy yeah yeah uh when you put it like that and i’m talking to a mathematician okay for everybody else yeah an order of magnitude means multiplied by 10. put another zero on it yeah there we go um just just just for the punters at the back um where was i’ve i’ve in all of that about versionizing well i’ve lost my threat so you’ve got two responses gathering loads of data um which is great and you’ve got to make sure you’ve got a routine for it as well so the students know that they write their answer and then they hover um so they have the board facing down um and again we explain why they why to do that as well because if you ask a student why they’ll say oh it’s so that nobody else can copy and then you follow me okay well why is copying bad and they say because uh i don’t want anyone to steal my answer yeah that’s what that’s what they’d normally say because people not children people are self-centered and they think it’s about them but like the point of the mini whiteboard is is and i said that david said david said to me uh you know it’s about stealing your stealing eyes i said david actually you know it’s not about you yeah if if danny steals your answer yeah obviously it’s not nice because they’re stolen from you yeah but it also means that i can’t help with any yeah because like danny doesn’t know it danny doesn’t understand uh he’s just copied your answer and now i think he knows it he’s like he’s tricked me and now like i can’t help him yeah it’s my job to help you and and danny if you’re if you’re lying to me and you’re saying i understand this when you don’t like it how do i even know and then somebody else gets my time and you lose so yeah it’s not it’s not even it’s not even in your interests um so it’s important to like a lot of the shift in my teaching has been about moving from thinking about a class as like just a group of individuals and thinking about like the whole class and how do i interact with the whole class and so many whiteboards are about building that sense that we are a class working together and it’s about me getting information from the class and thinking about everyone in the room and not just the student i happen to be looking at or whatever um and that’s that’s part of the shift as well uh and and in a similar vein you know even if it wasn’t about gathering assessment data yeah so let’s say i’m let’s say i’ve got a question which is long right so it’s you know it’s a couple of sentences people are like oh what’s the point in doing a mini white boards you can’t read everybody’s and i’m like yeah i mean i know i can’t but at least i know that everybody’s written yes yes so so if i ask the question verbally i’ve got i ask one kid and i know that they’ve thought about the answer but i don’t know anything about the other 29 even if i do the most perfect cold call you know everything like i don’t know any i don’t know whether or not the other 29 are really thinking about it whereas when i use the mini and whereas and even if they’re doing independent work in their exercise book yeah kids are brilliant at masking a complete lack of work um so it might look to me like students are sat and working but they could just be rewriting the questions leaving blanks highlighting underlining the title or whatever so when i use a mini whiteboards then i i have a much better chance that students are actually writing and thinking and doing even if i’m not going to read everyone’s and i don’t i pretend to so you know i’ll get them to show not be like that and i’ll pretend to look at everyone’s but um obviously you know like i said i’ve got 40 kids in one of my classes i can’t look at everyone’s answer even if it is only one word and then you’re just looking at your that your kind of target kids who give you information about the rest of the class so your i guess your weakest third is a good bet so you look at five or six responses there if those kids get it you can make an assumption that everybody else does if those kids don’t you do a quick reteach and then you do it again you’re aiming for like 80 90 and then you can move on um something along those lines broadly um and does it seem to be adam are you do you tend to use these is it kind of midway through an explanation or is it sandwiched between an explanation and practice when would you predominantly be used ordinarily in in two main parts the first part is before an explanation in what we call a prerequisite check so for anything that i’m teaching there’s knowledge that um that the students need to have i’ll give you a good example here something that i didn’t do well enough um i had for the first time in quite a while last week i had a lesson where you know when you finish a lesson you’re like right they just didn’t get it yeah they’re just like we’re just hamming away our lessons 100 minutes and i’m like we were hammering away it for 100 minutes they just didn’t get it they didn’t understand um it was it’s a very weak group um i’ve talked for a long time uh they’re year 11 and we were doing distance time graphs nice right and um my explanation was i and i did a check before so we know how to calculate speed they understand what a distance is they understand what time is they know what the units are all of that so i thought and they and by the way they know how to like like understand a graph so if i point to a point on the graph they know right that’s x equals four y equals seven or whatever um so all of that was in place but what i realized as the practice was ongoing and i sorry and i did that with mini whiteboards okay yeah because it’s crucial for me to get information about whether or not they know this because if they don’t know it we can’t move on so when that is like the purpose of the mini whiteboard at that point is to gather information so i gave you already two purposes now purpose number one was to gather information purpose number two is to make sure that everybody’s working yeah here i’m hitting purpose one big time purpose one big big big big big time then what it transpired throughout the lesson the reason why they couldn’t well it wasn’t all of them was a few of them really couldn’t get the distance time grass was because they just struggled with basic number bonds so saying things from like right if you’ve gone from seven meters to 12 meters how far have you gone and they were like 19 meters yeah yeah right and i’m like no no what’s like what’s the difference between 12 and seven they were like i don’t know what you’re saying and it’s like it was 12 take away 7 and they’re doing it on their fingers right and and like that massively slows everything down and that’s prerequisite knowledge they didn’t possess and it meant that the lesson was a failure um and that’s that’s on me yeah like i look in the mirror and i say okay my prereq check wasn’t good enough right because i didn’t anticipate all of the knowledge that they needed and i made some big assumptions uh and that’s on me that’s not on them yeah earlier adam of five years ago would have got frustrated like how can they not know this incredibly annoying but like okay they they don’t simple fact is they don’t and i didn’t check for it it’s tricky that isn’t just just as a little interjection there trying to trying to get a sense of all that the full scope of pre-rec knowledge that kids need it’s very easy to overlook little things like that isn’t it you know stuff that kind of fits a little bit outside it’s not the obvious stuff that you check for whenever you’re thinking of you know yeah yeah i i don’t i don’t want to be like uppity about it either but even the obvious stuff isn’t checked for yeah um you know i i’m very i’m very lucky you know i work four days in school and my other day i get to go to visit other schools i get to do all sorts of things and people send me videos of lessons you know i’m very lucky i you know there aren’t there aren’t many science teachers who have seen as many lessons as many different schools as i have and and i consider it a blessing like a real life a real luck an honor and a privilege and a responsibility to like give people good feedback and i’ve seen in you know in many lessons i’ve seen retrieval practice i’ve seen independent practice i’ve seen good modeling i’ve seen good check for understanding i’ve seen good questioning i’ve seen great behavior management yeah outside of my department i have never seen a good prerequisite check wow it’s it’s i’ve just not seen it people don’t do it it’s not normal because you put up the slides yeah and you say right this is our learning objective and then you launch into your explanation yeah that’s what happens right so you describe this we’re going to describe this we’re going to explain that and we’re going to you know evaluate or the third thing whatever it is and then you just like go straight into your explanation there’s never a check right and i’ve seen people check for understanding after their explanation which is great of course but it’s about doing it before before the explanation and it’s not something that’s common practice even when it’s like obvious stuff yes so i still don’t see it and it’s quick to do especially with the mini whiteboards right it’s super fast well it can be um it’s fast to like get that snapshot yeah but the process of thinking about it before yeah of course and also the the the review and the reteach can sometimes be long so whereas like you would do now which is just general retrieval practice should be fast and punchy and quick and and over and done with you know within 10 minutes your prereq check could take a long time because you know if i’m if i’m teaching distance time graph and i realize that my kids don’t understand rate of reaction in the do now i’m not really teaching it then in this i’ll push it off yeah i’ll do another time but but if i’m about to do my distance time graph and i realize that students don’t understand how to plot a point on a graph then i’ve got to do that now and i’ve got to jettison what i was planning today yeah because there’s no point right okay so we’ve got that one key use of the mini whiteboards is that the pre-req check will be what would be um so the other one is then straight after your explanation okay so if you ask most people why to why you’d use mini whiteboard straight after an explanation let’s say again for assessment and checking for understanding that is only half right um because it it is correct that um the mini whiteboard is is a good check for understanding and it you know it’s great there’s no better check for understanding but i think there’s also something else that people don’t uh realize as much which is um what we call consolidation so when students have just started to learn something new it’s very kind of hazy in their minds the same for anyone um it’s it’s loose and if you ask them to practice straight away straight after explanation even if they understand it in the sense that yeah i got that that made sense yeah they might not they might not be ready i’ll give you a great example really recently um i was teaching isotopes with a year 10 class and um oh god i’m riffing now i’m really gonna have to search back and remember the exact format and um we’d i’d explain to them um what an isotope was um and i did a quick check for understanding um to say you know these two things isotopes you know just comparing two things next to each other these two isotopes because like yes they’re isotopes because they’ve got same number of protons if number of neutrons great next question are these two isotopes yes great fun it’s like kind of a multiple choice type thing with a bit of a push afterwards and then the fir i was like craig right you guys ready to do some uh independent practice go for it and then the first question in independent practice was substantively the same thing but in terms of its like structure was different so it wasn’t like are these two isotopes i think if i remember correctly it was um making full reference to their protons neutrons electrons explain why these two are isotopes yeah and the kids were like they just like just didn’t even start they were like i just don’t understand that i just don’t know what to do and i’m like but i just check you know again possibly like well i just checked your understanding didn’t i yeah the problem is that that knowledge when it first starts is so flimsy it’s so hazy it’s so ephemeral and it’s so cute and like you know if you see you eat so what you’ve just taught they’re like pushing it even that little bit further is going to be really difficult for the students and you know that’s what a well crossed crafted question set does right it moves it from things they’re really familiar with and you know i know that i’m talking to the diane of variation theory and through really slight variations moves it to things which are further and further away but like the that process we call consolidation and it’s best done on a mini whiteboard and it’s best done as a whole class the reason why i like doing it on a mini whiteboard is a because everybody writes i don’t have a kid sitting there being like yeah i get this and then i’m doing it by questioning or whatever and then they’ve not they’ve not yet verbalized anything they’ve not said anything um so the consolidate part of the consolidation there is is like the act of doing something yeah you know i i’ve got 30 kids right and i ask a question of say six of them and they all give me a great answer yeah i’ve done a good check for understanding but the other 24 haven’t had a chance to verbalize anything they haven’t had a chance to say anything they haven’t had a chance to like write anything to get those ideas out there and what that means is that when they then get to practice they’re like i don’t know what to do and and they just don’t do anything so the mini whiteboard is super powerful because it does both yeah it lets you check for understanding it also lets them it also makes sure that everybody is practicing but also in like a format that is that they’re not no kid is ever stressed out sorry provided you get your culture of error right kids are more happy to write something when they’re not showing a mini whiteboard than they are in a book yeah because the kids like oh if i get it wrong in the book i have to cross it out effort blah blah yes it doesn’t really work like it’s designed there to be like to be ephemeral and and like your whole class environment is what you’re doing at that point is you’re saying right we we are hesitant we’re just getting used to this new knowledge yeah let’s give it a go right and there’s no there’s no um like formal writing of the things down um and so minnie white was really powerful for that and so we don’t actually we talk in our department we talk about what we call a check and consolidate so we’re doing two we’re doing two things at once we are both checking whether they understand and getting loads of information but we’re also starting that process of consolidation and that’s about everybody writes and it’s about getting started on the independent practice and it’s and it’s preparing for independence and i was very i was very careful by the way when i said my tip right at the beginning i said i’ll read it yeah i said to make sure your students are ready to practice use mini whiteboards so i didn’t say to check your students understanding i said to make sure they’re ready to practice and part of being ready to practice is checking understanding but part of being ready to practice is also starting that process of consolidation so they can then go and start doing questions that are you know a bit different to what you said and they feel more comfortable and more confident because their knowledge has started to be uh solidified and concretized i guess a good way to think about you know with four you know i was teaching you sevens about forces recently and i was showing them free body diagrams and i was saying you know i show them a whole load of different ones and i said is this a free body diagram and the kid was like oh and again we did meanwhile was yes no yes blah blah blah great and then i moved the slide aside yeah and i just said um i i drew a free body diagram and i said what’s the name of this kind of a diagram blank right well hang on a second we’ve just done loads of practice on free body diagram right why does nobody why can nobody tell me why because they’ve never had the chance to like say that word they’ve never had a chance to like get that out so so then at that point i did a call and response right because the right thing there is they just need to see it and then and then after that i did another example where they had to write down the word free body diagram right but but like they’re just not ready at that point and it’s not about checking for understanding they do understand yeah because they just answered five or six questions correctly they do understand but they’re not it’s not consolidated yeah understanding is a spectrum and you start off with like this hazy ephemeral knowledge and then it builds and builds and builds and builds but you’ve got to realize at the beginning it’s flimsy it’s straw okay final question on mini whiteboards adam um i wonder if you’ve got any uh techniques or advice for getting reluctant staff um on board for using mini whiteboards and the reason i ask is i saw on twitter i believe you were running a cpd session where you kind of use mini whiteboards by stealth can you just talk a little bit about that if that’s all right yeah so um so i again i’m lucky i’m very blessed people ask me to deliver cpd in training and more and more um the sessions that i deliver look more and more like my lessons so i deliver them in the same way that i teach so the same modeling strategies the same questioning strategies same mini whiteboard strategies um so i always ask to make sure there are many whiteboards out and sometimes that involves a hunt around the school normally to the math department by the way but i do always ask for there to be mini whiteboards on the show because um they’re brilliant for me when i’m giving cbd because i want to check for understanding as well and i want to be able to give people the chance to consolidate and write practice and i also want to model the kind of things that i do in the classroom uh and basically you know across the course of that people sort of get it so it wasn’t the session about many white boards but people like you know obviously i talk about them and i’m like by the way do you see how powerful that was i just use the mini whiteboards people who are used to sitting in cpd like this and just you know gazing into the middle distance and i’m now kind of you know forcing them to be engaged and to get involved and like it’s quite enjoyable um and uh i’ve always felt that there are some teachers are humans yeah so there are some humans that will never change yeah you ask them to do something a bit differently nah the answer is no okay fine you know that that’s the minority yeah the the majority of teachers want to do a better job and the problem is like humans are naturally predisposed to think that we’re already doing a good job um and we’re not good at taking feedback that says you can do better so i think it is always about showing it’s either about proving to people that they’ve gone wrong somewhere or it’s about showing them that they can do better so for example when my boss said to me look you got you did a really good question it was a really good check for understanding you’ve got one piece of data do you not think you could have collected 25 and and like i couldn’t how can you say no to that it’s just like so obviously right and he’s saying to me you can do better yeah he’s saying you can do more
4 replies on “To make sure your students are ready to practise, use mini-whiteboards”
Really enjoyed listening to this – thank you both for putting together.
I’d only every used MWBs to gather information about whether pre requisite knowledge was in place. Really helpful to be reminded how useful they are for checking understanding and just as importantly, consolidating that understanding.
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Very interesting and I will use ideas from this chat, especially the pre-requisite questioning.