More tips from Jo Morgan
Video transcript
right joe tip number two please okay tip number two uh make sure students know whether they’re right or wrong and don’t wait until it’s too late oh i like it go tell me more okay so um again i’m gonna i’m gonna reference maths but i think this probably um applies in in all subjects most subjects um it’s this idea of having students do an entire chunk of practice or exercise and they’re getting it all wrong and they don’t know till the end and then it’s just kind of a waste of time so um you know there are various different ways that you can kind of deal with this and when i in my first job in teaching i used to work at a girls grammar school where very much me and all my colleagues had this this technique of just putting the answers up for an exercise at the beginning you know so so you could hand out your exercise and you’d have all the answers on the board and the students would just work it out check oh yeah you’ve got that one right um and i and that sort of works quite well a level as well and then i moved to another school where immediately and i found that the students would um just copy down the answer yeah yeah so i had to i had to think more cleverly about how to make sure that students were able to know immediately whether they had the understanding to carry on with the exercise so what i tend to do now is i’ll put a task up on the board and i’ll give them say a minute or so to get that first question going and it depends on the topic and how long each question takes but say i’ll give them a minute to get started and i might have a little circulate around to make sure everyone’s on task and then what i’d normally do is i’ll then return to the board um like my whiteboard so i might have the task up on the screen and i’ll go and i’ll go back to the whiteboard and i might do the first question on the board um and so again that’s me doing it live they should be getting on with their work at that stage but some of them might be stuck and they might watch me do it and and then i’ll work all that out and then i’ll have an answer at the end and then i’ll say to them and i don’t like to interrupt them much while they’re working so i think it’s really important for teachers to not constantly talk over students when they’re doing exercise but i will say right everyone the first answer is on the board can you make sure you’ve got that one right before you carry on with the rest of exercise some of them might already be on question three by that stage yeah um and if you’ve got it wrong put up your hand i’ll come and help you um and so there’s a few things there first of all i’ve got that whole thing modeled on the board so what it might be is that they look at it and nice they think oh actually i can see what she’s done and i can see why i’ve got the different answer and they might immediately be able to self-correct and then go on move on get the next one right or they might look and say oh my answer’s totally wrong and i have no idea why and then they put their hand up and i go and help them but the prob if you don’t do this kind of thing if you’re not providing them with one or two early answers then it could be that they get the first one wrong they’re like my wrong one is everyone wrong and i do the whole lot wrong and then you’ve lost your opportunity to to do the what your job is which is to go through and help them improve so they’re not going to make any progress so um so i think it’s just you know there are various techniques you you can provide the answers up front another technique is and you quite often get worksheets um where they have the answers jumbled up at the bottom or something so students can you know they know if they’re getting an answer that’s not at the bottom then they know that so it doesn’t sound like question three the answer is this it’s just as a selection so for example math pad have quite a lot of resources where they’ve got a whole load of questions and then sort of they’ll have a big chunk of answers all jumbled up and i say to the students um it’s not a matchup activity really it’s an activity where they’re working out the answer and then just check that your answer’s at the bottom if it is you can cross it off and if it’s not down there you’ve done something wrong so that’s just another way of um kind of making letting them check as they go um but it’s just so important isn’t it that um um that you that you give them the opportunity to know early on whether they’re on the right track because otherwise you’re just wasting sort of uh exercise for 10 15 minutes where they’re getting them all wrong it makes you imagine they get them all wrong and at the end you put the answers up you say right we’re going to purple pen our answers everyone mark your answers and then someone mark cross cross cross cross cross and say right what’s next and it’s like what a waste of time so i just think it’s really important to find a way of providing answers early on which will depend on your class how the way you do it um to make sure that they then get the help they need at the right time i completely agree joe so three three things on this um again if i go back earlier on in my career i thought the key thing was that the kids didn’t copy that that was kind of the top thing in my head so i would always do what you described i’ll leave the answers till the end and it’s only when you kind of gain an experience that you realize no the most important thing here is that the kids are practicing the right thing and developing that right fluency and there is that trade-off so i’m sure some kids might try and take advantage of it and just wait till you’ve done it on the board and so on and so forth but you’re going to get far more benefit from the kids who are taking it seriously and and practicing practicing correctly because they’ve got access to the answers and my second mantra of our conversation i like the uh the practice doesn’t make perfect practice makes permanent i think that’s a really really good one to bear in mind because whatever the kids are practicing that’s what they’re going to remember we want to make sure that’s that’s the right thing and final thing joe just on a practical sense i love your idea that the kids kind of crack on with their work and then after a minute or so you bang up the answer and the method of question one to the board and they can check do you would you then if it’s let’s say a ten question exercise would you then like do the same for kind of question three or question five a bit later on how how do you manage that um as as the exercise progresses so i think that really depends on how they’re getting on so obviously i i think circulating around the room is just such a vital part of teaching and that’s why during covert we really struggled with our teaching because we couldn’t get around the room but i think if i’m circulating around the room and i can just see there’s like a really high level of success with the with the task and they all kind of know what they’re doing then i might just actually wait till the end put all the answers up at the end but then what i always do when i put the answers up is i say something like um so here are the answers but i’m not 100 sure they’re all right because you know quite often you get mistakes especially if you’ve downloaded a resource so what i want you all to do is if your answer doesn’t match while on the board just challenge it just say to me what you’ve got and then and actually it’s a really nice technique because you’ll get some someone who’s like they’ll put up a hand and say i got a different answer for question five and i’m pretty sure mine’s right and i’ll say right so i’m gonna do question five on the board now and then there often there’ll be other people who have got that one wrong as well so even if i’m pretty sure the answers are all right i’ll often say to them if you’ve got one that differs to mine put your hand up and we’ll go through that one so i’m not having to go through every single question but i am going through one or two at the end so i will do that in an activity when i’m circulating i can see a high level of success if i’m circulating and i’m seeing that there’s students that are generally finding some of them well say half the class is doing well and half the class are making a bit of a mess of it then i might say i’m actually going to put up the first five answers halfway through and if you’re getting them all wrong i’ll come to you directly or i might gather a little group together or something um but yeah so that really depends on how they’re getting on i think perfect love it you