More tips from Sammy Kempner
Video transcript
all right tip number five what have you offers um so uh we have oh yeah trick your students to test if they really understand oh another good one trick your students okay go on tell us about this one um so so basically it might be just you know once once you i’m not saying trick in the beginning they have to know what they have to have to at least like have a model to work from yeah but when you are guiding practice in the front let’s say a student makes a mistake you’ve asked them a question because you’re doing all together um and you ask them one of them a question and tell you the wrong thing let it hang there let them wait let them collect like and see if the classes noticed and if they haven’t noticed then you can hold them to account like what’s going on here like why have you not like this is a mistake and no one has no one’s got a hand up so do you not understand or you’re just not listening and so letting it letting it sit there is really nice but sometimes maybe in one of the few times that i go directly into like when we’re doing a guided guided example and i do a little bit for them and i just kind of try and like rush to do a few little steps so i want to get to the whatever the next part of the lesson is and then i’ll put a mistake i’ll throw in a mistake there and let it sit there for a bit and i’m like i’m hoping and expecting immediately there’s a whole sea of hands going up and being like you know what like that’s a mistake if they don’t then again you weren’t listening we don’t understand you should have asked a question but something’s gone wrong i like this i like this one because it feels high risk that’s what i like i like i like it yeah like at its worst i mean like it’s most harsh um a kid will give a good a good explanation like an explanation that’s not perfect like in the sense that they’ve admitted detail don’t say anything wrong and so rather than doing a stretch it question to test you just you kind of stare at them like it’s just like do you is are you actually saying that’s the answer um do you really think that um and sometimes you can actually say that you like so that you you’re going with three as a final answer and then like it you know if they really understand then they’ll be like yeah i do and obviously also the culture in the room if you build this up over time and they they come to expect sometimes you’re gonna trick them and they’ll stick to their guns a little bit um but if if they’re not convinced even with the culture in the room they know that sometimes i’ll do this um in that moment they’re so unsure of themselves because they don’t understand fully they’ll say oh no no actually that’s not my name i i was just that was that was wrong let me have another go and uh so that he just just sort of like staring at them or repeating their answer i think it’s a really powerful tool because uh you see if they really if they’re really really confident in what they’re talking about this is fascinating to some so a couple of things on this um i am intrigued just generally about the role that mistakes play and kind of students identifying and explaining mistakes in learning and so on my limited my limited reading on it from research and i’ve spoken to michael pershing about this is that obviously common sense says it’s really important for kids to be able to articulate why something’s wrong as much as it is just to be able to regurgitate right things all the time but as you said at the start they’ve got to attain have attained some kind of understanding of fluency of the right way to do it before we start introducing kind of the wrong ways and getting them to comment but what i love about what you do there and i genuinely do love this is what i tend to see in lessons and i’ve done this myself many times is the only time i’ll ever ask a question like that is when there is a mistake so like a kid will make a mistake and i’ll i’ll say oh okay is this right everybody do we think and the only time i say that is when there is a mistake so the kid’s like oh no it’s a mistake so they suddenly start switching on i’ve never once thought to flip it and say is this right when it actually is right but that is like you say because then they’re really on their toes right because then they’ve got to be thinking well he’s done this to me before i don’t know which way this is going to go and it i imagine as you’ve said that this all comes down to the culture if this is something you’re doing regularly it’s the kids are just they must just be on their toes all the time with you sami that’s what i that’s what i’m getting from this yeah yeah they i mean maybe um you know i’ve got a lot of evidence to suggest otherwise but um i think yeah i i it’s a it’s a it’s a simple thing you know like they’re probably more important they’re they’re i’m certain there are way more important tips that people will hear but it’s just nice to have in your kind of in your pocket as an option um with no no planning needed yes just to test the reliability um and i think yeah that that’s why i like it because it’s just it’s a good it’s actually a good check of um confidence because when it comes down to when they get scared and they realize like oh my god do i actually think this the only thing they can fall back on is their logic and like the reason that scotland so if they if they really understand the logic then they should say yes like that is my answer yes and if they don’t then they don’t understand the rest of it enough and so that and that’s fine and it’s not it’s not one of those moments where you tell them off or like anything like that but you say it’s a signal to you that the they sign understood it well enough and if the class haven’t picked up on it you can sometimes the class you know where the class have understood because you can see them starting to like smirk or whatever just to themselves it’s quite a funny moment but um if the rest of class are just like honestly like don’t really is that the answer then you know like it is as i say it’s not a it’s not a fool proof it’s not checking for understanding but it is testing the reliability um of a student in that situation i love it sammy just one question on this um i have a bit of a thing at the moment and it got it’s the most obvious thing in the world but if you’re asking a really good question then you don’t just want one kid to do the hard thinking you want you want everybody to benefit from that question and this applies to lots of different things but it seems to me that this is a real powerful thing that you want every child to be benefiting from so okay one child has said that the answer is three and you’ve then said to that are you sure is it is it really three are you going with that how do you ensure that the rest of the class also benefit from that thinking and it’s not just a moment that’s just happening between you and the child yeah it’s a really good question i think a lot of i mean always when you specifically ask one student there’s a danger of this happening and it’s about how you like sometimes it can be physically just turning to the rest of the class like just looking like make eye contact with them and see like when you make eye contact with them um you’re implicitly saying what do you think about this yes um and so but it might also be like sometimes if it’s if it’s uh if you’re generally not sure about whether or not they’ve followed it might be with all right talk about this in your groups kind of thing um but i think you don’t need to it doesn’t need to drag out they’ll find they’ll be engaged enough by the moment uh that um just just because it’s it’s not par for the course it’s not a normal lesson so the teacher suddenly says are you sure about that that’s gonna that’s anything different to the norm is more likely to grab their attention i think um you know the transformation in in their in kids faces it like you can almost physically see it even though you you can’t when you start telling them a story about something yeah yeah yeah like it’s like something like jolt like i’m so interested um and it’s it’s a kind of similar thing to that uh it’s not this is not rigorous scientific research and whatever but it’s i think it’s it’s still it’s still like it’s fine and uh it’s a handy tip so yeah i think it’s a brilliant tip so just to clarify sometimes may you formalize that and it may be a case of right everybody have a think on your own jot it down your white blood’s disgust but but more often than not you get the sense that that local and the moment itself will all be yeah i mean with the one with the one where they’re like it’s kind of dramatized this is the way you look at you sure like that in that yeah but if it’s a mistake that a student’s left on the like you’ve just written down their mistake on the board and you’ve tried to play it really cool not change anything about yourself and like if if only a few hands go up after a while sometimes you go well beyond with it and you’re like right i’ve got to stop here because no one’s put a hand up yet i’m asking myself what we’re doing here you turn into a big learning point you go like right there’s a mistake on the board put your hand up when you spotted the mistake and you know in a similar you know this is a really good one you know when i was saying them if you’re doing like trying to get them to spot a pattern you don’t want someone to tell them same for spotting a mistake i think if if the mistakes on the board a really nice thing to do is just inside let’s look at the board and when you think you’re supposed to say put your hand up and then you get a gauge in the class for who thinks they’ve spotted a mistake but then also they’ve got the space to think about it and process it and if and if if some of them have their hands up for a while you can be like write it down and perform what you think this mistake is or whatever write down you know so i think that you in those moments you can really turn it into a big event in the lesson um so the less pantomime moments like that then then you can that is brilliant sammy that is brilliant