Two Way Feedback: An introduction.

Learning focused student book reviews.

With the announcement by Ofsted that their focus on reviewing curriculum through student books, I thought it would be useful for me to share what a learning driven book review should contain. I wrote this along time a go , as an attempt to move the focus away from "book scrutiny" and a genuine attempt at prioritising what we know about structuring learning through lesson design and the curriculum. There will undoubtedly be something missing from this list but I think the following will reveal to us elements of lesson design, and the sequencing of teaching that can lead to learning. The list hopefully begins to ask the question "Does the curriculum serve the learning of my students?"

In no particular order the list is as follows:

• Constructive alignment of:
• intentions, teaching, assessment and feedback.
• Engagement in content over tasks.
• Activation of the correct prior knowledge.
• Multiple exposures to the same idea ( 3 or 4)
• spaced with time.
• interleaved with other content
• involves practice with content, especially the role low stakes testing can play.
• Does feedback develop self regulation? eg Use of Checklists, exemplars, co-constructed success criteria.
• Big ideas are broken down into smaller ideas and then built back up.
• Students have opportunities to think and struggle with content, i.e enter “the pit”
• Avoidance of relying solely upon scaffolded performance.
• Tasks that reduce means end thinking.
• Timing is considered for use of scaffolds. eg after an initial struggle.
• What assessment assess performance ( short term recall and understanding) or learning ( long term retention and application?)
• When does assessment of learning occur?
• Use of pre and post tests.
• is testing linked to learning intentions or grades?
• Does the feedback help student interact purposefully with the content.
• Is there an over reliance upon means end feedback, task level feedback.
• Is there sufficient content feedback.
• Domain thinking such as writing with genre.
• Opportunities to write applying knowledge of the subject in a formal way?
• clear literacy feedback upon developing this skill?
• Is academic language at the heart of learning? Eg science writing in the third person.

Since writing this I have developed what I hope is a self reflective activity for teachers to undertake a book review of their own. It is mainly focused around feedback, but where it has been planned as well as some of the elements from above.

What type of marking is present in this book?

There are many ways to provide feedback to students that can have a positive effect upon student learning. However the general rule is that content feedback is most effective.

“Regulate the learning rather than the activity. “ Dylan William.

1. Feedback about the task- how well was it done? What factual knowledge do they have? What conceptual understandings do they have? Advice and guidance may seek to identify what to do next. Eg.  Give an example here.
2. Feedback about the Process- how well have they thought about the task? What procedural knowledge do they have? Advice seeks to help the students think through the task. Eg. Start by showing your working out, before substituting the data in. or these sequence to help students work how to tell which organelles are nucleuses and which are chloroplasts: How many nucleuses does the plant cell have?____ Do plant cells have more than one chloroplast? ____ .How can you use this to remember how to label THE nucleus and the chloroplasts” (Process feedback)
3. Feedback about Self regulation based upon how well have they directed their activity and thinking and actions? What metacognitive knowledge have they employed?What might be a good strategy for learning how to remember labelling diagrams? Might covering them and trying to draw them from memory then checking how accurate you’ve been  help? ( Self regulation- providing a rehearsal strategy)
4. Feedback about based upon personal evaluation.Seeks to spot attitude, effort and motivation problems. Eg Poor effort. Advice and guidance is intended to motivate or correct poor learning attitudes.  This can often be counterproductive.
5. Content feedback seeks to clarify student thinking, provides the information that students may not have been holding in their working memory while producing the work or answer. Advice and guidance goes beyond the current task, and are often simple re-explanation. You have wrongly labelled the Nucleus as a chloroplast ( Task feedback based on content knowledge) In which does the force of weight act?  
6. Feedback about the quality of  student work attends both accuracy of the ideas within the work and then any notion of quality that your subject or schooling values. For example add units., spelling and grammar corrections
7. Summative assessment feedback that indicates current level of performance. This feedback intends to inform the student of their current level of performance through exam grades, percentage scores; it should tell student if they are on-track or if they are heading in the right direction.

Task A: Look through your book and tally each bit of feedback provided in these categories.

Task	Process	Self regulation	Personal	Content	Quality	Performance

Task B: Now tally up the ratio of teacher comments to student responses.

Total number of comments	Number of teacher comments where response is expected	Number of student responses

Learning is most successful when:

Task C : Ideas are built upon, and revisited over time. For ideas to be learned they should be revisited 3 or four times. Is there an example in your book that shows this? Photocopy or photograph this sequence and annotate where the ideas are established.

Task D: When students receive high quality content focused feedback. Is there an example in your book to show this?   Photocopy or photograph how this was scaffolded and annotate why the student response was successful

Task E: Teachers use student learning ( and errors) as a feedback and change the teaching as a result of it.

1. Is there an example of student work being used diagnostically so that a change in teaching sequence, strategy or emphasis occurred? Photocopy or photograph how this was scaffolded and annotate why the student response was successful
2. Is there an example of a rubric or pre-planned marking code to target key knowledge?Photocopy or photograph how this was scaffolded and annotate why the student response was successful
3. Is there an example of students have redrafted work to improve its quality?Photocopy or photograph how this was scaffolded and annotate why the student response was successful

Task F: Is there an example where you feel the work has been overly scaffolded and students may have missed an opportunity to struggle and think about the content? Photocopy or photograph this task and annotate why this content may have been better served being less a structured performance.

Task G: Learning is considered long term retention and application of knowledge  while performance is more short term and completed with scaffolding and classroom prompts to hand or in near memory.

1. Is there an example of assessment of learning?
2. and example of  assessment of performance?

Fishbowl Converstaions- Student examples

This is a follow up post, to show real classroom examples of the students involved in adult like technical conversations. As always, I am taken aback by the complexity, subtlety and maturity Year 8 students can must when given the opportunity.

The example below shows  the roles the students took during this activity. Each student had a turn in the fish bowl, as an observer summating  the topics being discussed and as a coach to begin to consider the quality of the spoken word. It also shows the following parts of this technique


1. First half of the conversation last 5 minutes.

2. I share a tally chart of contributions. It must said that the successive groups grew increasingly aware of me doing this and lack of contribution became less of an issue by the third and final group.

3. The observers  then provide a positive summary of what has been said and then what was was missing. It is therefore useful to have content success criteria here. You might notice me having my two penneth here, and why not. I think this is right, I can listen and make detailed judgements of whats missing with real evidence, and teach to an audience of students who are interested in what I have to say, because it is currently relevant to them. It;s an example of "just in time " teaching.

4. The three students in each group meet, and the coaches start to provide feedback. I think/ hope that it is obvious they too have some structure to help them.

5. The second half then runs for 5 minutes and I am sure that the impact of observers and the coaches is evident. The conversation all were more detailed, had a more balanced approach by all students and quality (eg flow, use of connectives) improves.

What are critiques for?

Besides improving the quality of student work,being  an opportunity to check (real) progress, reflect upon next steps, and being an opportunity to teach critical ideas to an  audience of engaged students. What is the point of these time consuming assessment tasks?

For me, and for academic success, it's cultural. It's part of how classroom should be to help learning take place.

It's easy to empathise with the novice student who is about to "volunteer" their work for a whole class critique. To them it is a risk to be taken, nominally through the fear of being judged, but also by being aware of the haphazard nature of "peer assessment". The "add more detail" comments adding confusion, instead of clarity only decreasing the merit in taking the risk. However, it must be remembered that if a piece of work is worthy of critique, it will (or should) display the complexity of that students learning. We need to revel in this.

The classroom community is the grease that makes critiques work. This is why we have the protocols, to help manage the risk. Although simply written, these contain several cultural devices which are important in ensuring critiques work for the classroom community.

The first of these is in beginning the critique by seeking "kind, positive or  warm feedback" , obviously important for making people feel that their work is appreciated. Although the big reason for this goes way beyond this simple aim. It's more about looking at the work in an open minded way, finding what works, as well as what has not. Both the strengths and the weaknesses are useful. It is at this point that the critique becomes more about every students work, than it does about the individual work being scrutinised. By highlighting the strengths, students learn what quality work is like, and by teachers endorsing and interpreting these views we provide models of quality that students can then emulate.

This focus also, evinces the value of working with others, showing the dialetic nature of learning. Individuals benefit from the input from their community, but also the individuals can be benefit to their community.

This is why, as teachers we need to teach the procedural knowledge involved in taking part in a critique and offering feedback. We do this by modelling it in our own feedback, being metacognitive during critiques and providing feedback on the feedback being given. It teaches how to speak in a learning community:with respect, tolerance. compassion and focus on high academic standards.

Both students and teachers too often make judgements of others on a superficial basis. How much do we really know about each others strengths and expertise? Do we value these and make it part of our culture? Sometimes, as teachers we do need to prioritise our classroom community before we can address the academic and skills needs of our students. This is a start point.

The final aspect  is more permeating. Critiques should lead to the process of critique becoming less formal. By this I mean it becomes part of how the community speaks to one another and these conversations becomes ubiquitous.  Where students not only offer feedback to peers but actively seek it. They view each others work and offer praise and then suggest ways to improve it without prompt or scaffold. It's how we are as people.  This is the ultimate aim of critiques.

Pedagoo Christmas Party- Unfortunate Acronyms

Take one.......
Among the ramblings are Nuthalls difficulties in making learning visible, how random numbers are a hindrance not a help to learners, the reason why teachers need to claim back the word progress, the usefulness of SOLO taxonomy for tracking learning and the necessity of pre-assessing content. Oh, and lots of puerile acronyms.


I think this video makes the myth of activity and learning clear. It shouts know your pedagogocial content knowledge, look for those misconceptions. Equally beautiful are these posts by David Didau http://t.co/SpV59jCO and Kev Bartle http://t.co/JCqaweDc It appears we really are claiming back the word progress and focusing where our students need us to bve. Focused upon learning.

Through a SOLO lens.

For me SOLO taxonomy is an integrated part of my Teaching and Learning repertoire. It serves many purposes, very well as I learn more. It HELPS in many ways, I 'm using the help here pejoratively as the content of the learning (whether it be factual, conceptual, procedural or metacognitive knowledge) will determine the appropriate pedagogy. SOLO gives this process more clarity.

It helps breakdown overarching Learning Intentions into manageable, progressive chunks. The quantitative sections (Uni and Multistructural) sections are the foundations on which the rest of the learning will be built, often but not exclusively "essential learnings". Progress between the Unistructural and Multistructural sections are relatively simple to plan for, providing information is "hit" between three and four different ways, ensuring retention and relevance of student responses. Relational learning often brings about those activities that allow students to see the information in different ways.

SOLO also helps focus on what kind of thinking is helpful given the knowledge being studied. Radically I don't believe we can teach people to think.It's something we do as we are human. It's natural. People think. However, we can teach the importance of thinking in different ways to gain different perspectives. SOLO  helps focus on what kind of thinking is currently useful.

SOLO taxonomy is not a start point for planning learning, no tool or activity is, who would wander the aisles of Homebase picking out the best high revolution precision cutter, and then decide what to make (although I'd love one). However, it does help ensure clarity and progression within the content knowledge.When planning lessons or schemes of learning I tend to write down all the big content and skill ideas that the students need to know, then group them by concept, and only then do I view them with a SOLO lens. 

Looking at the learning intentions through a SOLO lens helps first plot any progressions that have already arisen, but most important makes me consider what are the essential learnings that students need to have before they understand or do what I want them to learn. In a way I back fill the building blocks of a concept. Sometimes, this is not possible and therefore I get to see clearly where the "leaps of faith" are needed. I never worry about this I'm "Nuthallian". I witnessed a student learn something a French lesson today, brilliantly the teacher had posed a question that required the distilling of a grammar rule, as well as seeking multiple responses from students. He started his response with " I was thinking that the answers was...." and then used one of the best thinking words "but" and continued to ascribe his learning to the responses the other students he had just heard, He concluded beautifully with "So they were right and the rule is this....it makes sense" As I said a leap of faith, but one where SOLO could make me aware of where I might need to  scaffold more, or target my formative assessment. This example is probably the commonest "leap of faith" for SOLO and for me the most difficult to plan for, getting to Extended Abstract. Sometimes, this is solved by a single question. "Would the student learning of THIS content  benefit from spending time contemplating a Extended Abstract activity?" If the answer is NO, then I don't crowbar it in. The SOLO levels are a tool, not a destination.

Its not uncommon for my Learning intentions of gaps. Keep it relevant to the content

If the answer is YES, then SOLO provides a structure to visualise potential next steps. I really like the logical nature and it fits beautifully with Science .I know colleagues have found this to be true across all "subjects", but in all cases it content knowledge view with the SOLO lens. The simplified way it represents content knowledge and how increasing complexity can be achieved. This probably  explains why it's transferable.
For me the first appeal was the to assess the quality of student work and in doing so naturally fell in to using it  to provide feedback. It was not until much later that I understood its full potential in developing progression in Learning Intentions that can be tracked, and this for me turns the "leaps of faith" into manageable, "plan-able"  and visible learning steps.

Chunking and SOLO Taxonomy.

“Chunking” of information makes it easier to understand as less information is having to be processed by the working memory. The neat example given by Dan Willingham’s book in his book “Why students don’t like school?” asks you to memorise

XCN
NPH
DFB
ICI
ANC
AAX

Which proves to be difficult, with people tending to remember  7 letters.  However, when these letters are rearranged into the following, it is easier to recall them all, as a result of you recognising the combinations of letters as they having meaning. This meaning is conferred by your prior knowledge. You are still in fact dealibg with 7 “items” of information, they just happened to be chunked together.

. Seven is recommended as a maximum number if items to work wirh.

Try it now

X
CNN
PHD
FBI
CIA
NCAA
X

Ostensibly this is what SOLO taxonomy does. It forces the teacher into “chunking” the information together and to discard irrelevant or unrelated knowledge.  It begs this question “To be able to understand this topic, the prior knowledge you need to is….”  

Let me attempt to exemplify this with an example. A  year 8 Science lesson on the  Refraction of light.





To explain this problem the students must know the following components, and use them in a relational way.  The first four components the students should have some experience of, the fifth (underlined) is the purpose of this lesson . The final one could be described as "local" knowledge, just pertaining to this problem. 

1. That light travels in straight lines.
2. How to draw a ray diagram
3. Light can be bent/ or change direction
4. Light must travel to the eye to be seen.
5. The pattern that light refracts in.
6. That some light will not pass through the Perspex block but straight into the eye.

Each of these can be broken down into smaller parts but these provide handy, chunks of information to use.

A related but important part of this is to explain why light changes direction. This will provide an opportunity for students to achieve Extended abstract, although this is not essential to the solving if this problem.SOLO is not a set if hoops to jump through,goodness knows educatirs have enough if these, but as in this example a method of structuring sequentially and sharing what the desired outcomes . 

With these identified it was easy to construct a self assessment rubric, that can also act as success criteria in subsequent attempts. I say subsequent attempts here as, this task has been designed for feedback and therefore students must be given an opportunity to have another go. 

This approach to planning learning, helps put assessment at its heart, it’s easier to identify potential stumbling blocks or to diagnose where the learning is really not getting it. In many ways it is the opposite of a “task” or “activity” driven lesson, where a task has been designed that may, engage and teach something about the topic at hand, but misses out the vital feedback loop that has a huge impact upon progress of learners. Don’t get me wrong there is space for engaging tasks, challenges and open-endedness but a balance is required. 

Take a look at these examples of student work, use the list about to identify where the student is struggling and what they do understand. These were the first four books on the pile, each one has clearly missed (at least) one of the chunks. 

".....ray lines must be straight"

"...make a comparison to the light that has not passed through the block" 

"use your notes to apply the pattern of refraction"

Incidently, I think I did not differentiate enough, I have now added a choice of problems to solve with the easier of the two removing the need to make a comparison. All made more visible for all by SOLO taxonomy.

SOLO taxonomy, planning and progress..

Today, a group of year students have been completing an extended writing task based around the wonderful PEEL strategy "fact in fiction". Since we had not seen each other for a week I structured a few tasks to remind them of the content ( and resources) and to facilitate the connection of concepts.

First, was a group task that had them as a list key ideas about the Immune system, a chance familiarise themselves with the content once again. A pure multistructural task.

Next  they were to define and distinguish between some key vocabulary. Words I knew they had struggled with in the previous lesson. The distinguish element to this was to ensure a relational understanding.

Another relational task followed, but this time choice was given  either comparing two ideas using a comparison alley or using an analogy map to create mental models for how these two ideas work. I was pleased to introduce choice as some of the analogies were very revealing. I particularly enjoyed the students likening lymphocytes to a bottle of  bleach as they release a chemical against pathogens.


All of these tasks were designed to be about five minutes in length and very much focused on the content. The next one was more complex but I'm hoping will lead to a detailed sequence. Again a relational task but required several pieces of complex information being used. The keywords here are the conceptual parts of this content.

The final task was to complete the fact in fiction task. This involves writing a fictional story inserting relevant facts along the way, but the clever bit is the insistence that the facts are underlined along the way. This encourages the use of key vocabulary and regular reflection. It is obvious when work is lacking in the content, this visual nature makes it easy for the students to see omissions and flaws in their work. There are opportunities for students to work in an extended abstractt way here and at the very least it encourages relational thinking. (See below for an example) 


SOLO taxonomy has helped the planning by making it easier to see the increase in the demand of each task and focus on the key connections important for understanding this topic. It is in this way that knowledge and understanding can be built, and teachable moments found and then focus upon what matters, in understanding and for the students at that time. Simple everyday tasks are easily sequenced to plan for (more) complex responses in student work. 


 An example of Fact in Fiction task

A weary travellers tale.

 (A fact in fiction writing task)

 Bob and Billy are twins. Identical twins the same in every way. They have just returned from holiday in China. Bob is jet lagged but is generally just dandy! Billy is not. He is feeling unwell. He has a fever, diarrhoea, and a rose coloured rash. Five weeks before they went, they had an appointment to be vaccinated for Typhoid and Malaria. Unfortunately, Billy had double booked with a hair appointment. His hair look superb on the plane, even the air hostess said so! 


 Your task is to complete the story of Bob and Billy outlining how Billy gets better with the help of his immune system. You must use as many scientific facts as possible. Underline them as you go. Make sure you include the following

•  How the white blood cells in Bobs body are working to protect him. 
•  Name the two types of white blood cell
•  How they immune system will fight the disease
•  What its means to be immune 
• What a vaccination is and how it works. 
• Which disease Billy has, why you think this and what type of microbe is causing it

 Good luck.

Student work using fact in fiction 

Critiquing culture takes off!

I sat down recently to mark some Year 8 practical write ups, which had been critiqued by students in pairs, during a teacher led session. So I expected to see some peer feedback and a second draft.  At first it didn't register that this student had done something different. I did notice that she had done three drafts but the significance didn't register. I was just impressed, by the work ethic and by how the drafting culture had quickly been accepted as the norm by the majority of this class. I did notice that one draft had been highlighted with different colours and thought "Great they have been thorough". But something didn't sit right. I looked again at the student work and saw draft one, followed by a critique followed by draft two which had also been critiqued and finally draft three. It then dawned. They have done an extra critique, but when did they do this? I then realised that the second draft had been critiqued independently of me! These students had not previously critiqued work, but have instantly seen the value and invested in it. The culture of critique and draft had taken off! I love the quote from this student after draft one. 

I am well aware that this is only two students who have completely taken to this, but I now have exemplar critiquing and drafted work to inspire and cajole others. Let the archiving commence. I must confess that I was slightly taken a back by the quality of the critiquing by the students on the second draft. It was so much better than what they had done when I had led the session. It was kind, helpful and specific, and contain real learning conversations and lots of subject content references.  I am becoming increasingly convinced that critiques are the best opportunity for teaching that we have, with ready made context and personal investment. What bothered me was how much better they were without me! In reality they had used the same success criteria we had established and had applied the feedback norms that were shared. But, the important thing is that they have made these there own, they can do it at anytime and with any topic or task and with great skill.  I have annotated the slides below showing the student work, but it really isn't necessary when you look at the work and comments. Drafting example

View more presentations from DKMead.

Obviously intrigued by the motivation to go to such lengths, I asked the two students involved. They had critiqued each others work and both had made huge improvements. I will photograph the other piece of work and add it to this blog post. The thing that strikes me about this AudioBoo is how matter of fact, they are about critiquing, drafting and hard work! They see it as part of learning, they see it as worthwhile, they see it as normal. Thank you Josie and Emily.

SOLO and connectives lesson reflection

My year 8 students are currently studying a module called " Do we still need fossil fuels?" which culminates in an extended writing piece in response to this question. They will peer critique (review) in small groups producing a journal collecting 5 different articles.This is part of our school wide focus on developing literacy.


As part of the preparation for this writing, I wanted to share with them useful connectives that would not only develop their literacy but also their thinking within the article. An opportunity presented itself with our use of the Electrocity SIM game. The Electrocity game was to be part of their on going research. before they started gaming each group had to name their town and come up with its priorities/ principles/mission statement. This serves two purposes, it establishes a narrative at the start of this enquiry of things they are interested in and secondly tells them that they can use the game as a way of researching what "will happen if...." scenarios.
I came up with the idea of listening into student conversations,recording on post it notes the the connectives used.I planned to debrief the students frequently, around every 7 minutes or so, ranking the connectives against SOLO taxonomy,thereby creating a just in time need to be taught about using connectives to develop our thinking.This was primarily achieved by understanding that their initial game playing session would involve a combination of "how do i play" and ""Hey we are playing games distraction. I knew that much if the conversation would be Prestructural at this point, with comments along the lines of "Cool you can build a stadium" or " Get a wind farm" So the second part of the debrief would be about compiling the connectives that they knew and I (surreptitiously) offered and again ranking them against SOLO. We were providing the next step.

Note how SOLO has been added as students started using returning to the SOLO feedback unexpectedly .

Another vital part of this session was the non judgemental feedback provided against observed use of resources. The helpful resources that we had made in previous lessons such as the "info scrolls", their notes, the information on the EON and Electrocity websites. All were highlighted at the beginning of the session, with a clear expectation the they should be used to inform decisions. Of course they were not, but this would change simply by counting usage and feeding it back. As can be seen in th ephotograph above.

The procedure was repeated once the students had settled back into game play. Notes were made on a different coloured set of post it notes to allow us to see progress made.It was pleasing to see that nearly all groups were now dipping into the resources albeit tentatively. The conversations began to change and they began to at least give reasons for the choices they wanted to make (i.e. the prevelance of "because" became noticeable). Many students returned to the principles they set up at the beginning with statements along the "we wanted to be as green as possible so we must use the wind turbines", demonstrating the power of establishing a narrative in enquiry work.
Again the students were gathered and their comments assessed against SOLO taxonomy. It was obvious with the different coloured post it notes that progress was being notes. NB; I am fully aware that the students were able to play the "Connectives" game and say the things they thought I wanted to hear. However I am unconcerned by this "imitation" work as they are actually practising the use of connectives. Exactly the point I was making.

I was very fortunate to have  @JamiePortman and @Gwynap visiting and acting as observers with me. So the of connectives was practiced consistently by all throughout the lesson. Although, the progress the students made over the whole lesson suggests that they had began to use these as their own. They had learned to use them through practice.

The following picture can be read as follows . The left had side is what the students had said i.e they current position. The post its on the right their next steps. SOLO taxonomy made this very easy to do for both my students and me. Orange Post Its were used in the first attempt mainly Pre and Unistructural. Blue the second attempt which is mainly Relational but with some Prestructural and Unistructural showing that some students required more practice at using this (well I never! Graham Nuthall correct AGAIN) and the final attempt in Green which interestingly had nothing below Relational!
I think what this shows is that SOLO taxonomy is a great way of giving and structuring feedback, and how by sharing the progress they are making can lead to more progress due to greater engagement.

Example of assessment and Feed forward using SOLO Taxonomy.

One  of the reasons I find SOLO such a useful framework is that it allows me to provide content related feedback to students, as well as "feedforward" (thanks @CHarte) to students. This helps develop student thinking and the quality of student work. I hope these examples illustrate how obvious the next steps in subsequent pieces of work are for these students. I find it a happy blend of specific and generic that makes it accessible to students.

Hinge Questions. A Clarification.

I have just Google searched the term "hinge questions" and to my horror one of my previous posts is the second on the list and the first to mention "Hinge Questions", and to be honest it's a bit naff. I feel I need to do this important strategy justice.

A Definition

I read a great quote on twitter from David Wees which went something like this.

" Grades are not precise measures of learning. Repeat: Not Precise!. Act accordingly" .

This encapsulates why hinge questions are so important . They are simply a tool to help the teacher and learner what the learner needs to do next, by helping them identify what alternative conceptions they hold on a particular ideas/concept/ item of learning. They are often multiple choice questions ( or at least these are easier to design) but can be more open ended in nature. But, either way the purpose of the question is to illicit what the learner understanding is in a clear and unambiguous way, and not confusing it with a level or a grade. It is the student understanding that matters, not where that understands on some arbitrary ( yet, important) measure, and this decides whether you can move forward "hinges" upon student thinking.

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK)

PCK can be simply be defined as the way in which content knowledge is used in teaching situations. For example improvising, making connections, drawing analogies, defining, redefining, and the ability to teach the same thing in different ways. A huge part of this is the ability to identify what is important in a topic and focusing the learner attention and focus upon this. PCK is also laden with the "mistakes" that are going to be made by learners. From this it's importance in hinge questions becomes apparent, just how do you start reconstructing student preconceptions?

The clearest explanation can be found here by its pioneer Lee Shulman.

Culture

I believe the first step is placing a value on identifying them for the student. This is a cultural manoeuvre, placing what were once perceived as a mistake or a wrong answer into a new category of "that's where I've been going wrong, what do I need to do about it!". To do this I vindicate the use of a making clear the pedagogical purpose of such questions every time I use them. I appeal for honesty (even down to a request not to guess).

This relies on a lot of trust not only of the teacher but also of themselves and their peers. So a long term consistent strategy is best, for example the use of a no hands up policy at appropriate time ( of course sharing the purpose of doing this) or celebrating mistakes and using them as a teachable moments. (Great blog post here from my esteemed colleague @saidthemac). The beauty of PCK is that you can (almost) plan for these moments.

Timing

It seems obvious but hinge questions should allow learners time to refocus on the important aspects. This brings about two main notions. Firstly, focusing on critical learning concepts as opposed to ideas that are not essential for further progression, this can be a difficult decision and relies on a sound PCK. A Key Stage 3 Science example could look something like this. When teaching about Photosynthesis the students prior learning would involve the identification of plant cell organelles. Important as these are, especially the chloroplasts (which are the site of photosynthesis), but at this level students understanding is not enhanced with more information than this. So any subsequent hinge questions would be better served on the process of photosynthesis, for example distinguishing between raw materials and products, or the affects of higher or colder temperature.

Secondly, there should be ample time to respond to the information at hand. This could be at the start of the lesson, with specific tasks to follow different hinges. Or toward the middle of the lesson to modify or clarify an emerging understanding or even at the end of a lesson, but only if you are planning the next lesson around these.

Some deconstructed example hinge questions.
1. Name the following –
Na
Cl
H2O
Fe
NaCl
CuSO4
CaO

Common mistakes are just naming the elements, and describing what they are made from. The first two are straight forward test that the symbols have a meaning, a scientific way of communicating as does water ( which is a compound). NaCl tests if they can follow a convention of placing the metal first and non metal second and changing the –ine ending to –ide CaO confirms this. The CuSO4 is more complex but can be completed by memory, hence the lower emphasis.

2. Choose the best answer
An element is made of
1. all types of atoms
2. one type of atom
3. one type of atom joined together in a pair
A compound is
1. at least 3 types of atom joined by a chemical bond
2. more than one element near another.
3. Two or more elements bonded together

Students often confuse atoms, elements molecules and compounds. This question makes this apparent. 1 is a misnomer 2 is the correct answer and 3 is a molecule which could be an element.

These are a little more complex, and students are instructed to pick the best answer. For example the Lungs responses are The site of respiration a "alternative conception" easily picked up when studying the respiratory system ! For breathing with is another easily acquired alternative conception. Breathing is a physical process and therefore involves the diaphragm and intercostal muscles and the ribcage, which affect the lung volume. The site of gas exchange is the correct and abstract answer.

So, there you go, I hope this is a slightly more comprehensive and therefore useful discussion of hinge questions. It would be great if you could post comments with deconstructed examples from your subject areas.