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How were wrong answers dealt with?
In several lessons there were no occasions when wrong answers could be given in public. In the first year we saw no episodes in which wrong answers were followed up in ways that showed people why they were wrong, instead they were offered alternatives or told: no (with or without explanation), try again, thankyou, or ignored.
During the project, teachers' behaviour in lessons implied they had become more interested in how students were thinking - this was more likely to be that they were developing strategies to expose and enhance thinking in public. In the second year there was more attention given to the wrong answer, how it was arrived at and why this was wrong. For example, teachers might respond with:
- Where did you go wrong? Try to work it out
- Question is asked again with smaller steps
- Explain how you got that
- Why?
- The implication of that is...
- Can we all help out?
- Asks student to think again
- Asks students to correct own answers
- e.g. I think x has been miscounted (teacher publicly works out why error occurred)
- Repeats answer and waits
Offers examples of possible wrong answers and gets students to work out what to say to the hypothetical students who produced them.
Pages in this section:
- How did teachers help students
- How did teachers use questions
- How was discussion managed
- How were ideas shared
- How were right answers dealt with
- How were wrong answers dealt with
- Lesson structures
- Lesson structures details
- Observations about lesson comparison
- Public writing in lessons
- Questions and prompts
- Strategies to support independent learning
- Task types used
- What habits have been established
- What ideas were emphasised
- What questions were answered quickly
- What was said about what is important
- What were lessons like
- What were lessons like details
- What writing were students asked to do
