Research School Network: Reading the room: why checking for understanding is about more than just well-rehearsed techniques Why checking for understanding is about more than just well-rehearsed techniques
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Reading the room: why checking for understanding is about more than just well-rehearsed techniques
Why checking for understanding is about more than just well-rehearsed techniques
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by Blackpool Research School
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Adapt Maths Wirral is a partnership between Blackpool Research School, the Education Endowment Foundation, and Wirral Council. It aims to reduce the gap in attainment in Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 maths between pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds and their peers.
“Three…, two…, one…, show me!”
Thirty-two mini whiteboards shot into the air. From the back of the room, the deputy headteacher nodded approvingly, ticking a box on the observation form marked: ‘Checking for Understanding’.
Mr Davis quickly scanned the sea of whiteboards. Eighteen students had the correct answer. Ten had made a predictable error. The rest had clearly misunderstood the task.
“Excellent whiteboard work, Year 8! We’ve got that routine nailed!,” Mr. Davis beamed, relieved the rehearsal had paid off. He turned back to the whiteboard. “Wipe them clean. Now, let’s move on to the next type of equation…”
Checking for understanding isn’t a performance or a box to tick. When schools obsess over the techniques — like shiny mini whiteboards and perfectly timed routines — it’s easy to forget the principles. If the answers we collect don’t actually change what we do next, we aren’t checking for understanding. We’re just choreographing it.
If we take time to check, we must make time to adapt.
Auditing current practices
Our partnership is working with 20 primary and secondary schools from across Wirral. We undertook an initial audit of current practices across these schools, and the findings around lesson adaptations spotlighted a priority.
Some schools noted that while they are proficient in gathering assessment data, the “so what” — the adaptation of teaching based on that data — remains a challenge.
Check and Adapt
Discussion of ‘checking for understanding’ can too often focus on techniques over principles. Techniques are important, but should only form a part of the conversation.
Effective Checking includes:
a toolkit of pupil response techniques. These might include mini whiteboards, gesture, finger voting, hinge questions, and exit tickets. But the technique used is likely to vary according to what the teacher is looking to find out, and should provide a clear focus on what to do next
a focus on understanding the thinking of all pupils. This is vital in providing the teacher with information that is useful in ensuring that the correct adaptations are made: relying on confident volunteers often gives a distorted view of whole-class understanding and means opportunities are missed
Understanding the thinking of all pupils
Consider the following example, which is one we discussed during our second Adapt Maths Wirral maths leads day.
When checking understanding in a lesson on using pictograms, it is clear that option B is likely to be better than option A. This is because option A relies on pupils ‘self-reporting’ their understanding, with no way of the teacher checking its accuracy. Option B is better: pupils are given time to consider what they would do, and James is ‘cold called’ to provide a response.
However, even option B is problematic. This is because the teacher is only checking James’ understanding. This means the teacher doesn’t understand the thinking of all pupils, and is unable to ensure that the correct adaptations are made.
A better check in this situation might be the option below. This is an identical question to the last one, but this time gives all pupils an opportunity to share their thinking.
Have a look at the pictogram question on the whiteboard.
I want you to think about what you would check first if you were answering this question. [pause]
Write your answer on your whiteboards and show me in 3…, 2…, 1…
Refining our toolkit
Once we have decided which techniques work best for our school and our pupils, our conversation should switch to how to refine these techniques in order to make them as effective as they can be. During our maths leads day, we considered two questions to support with this:
How do we refine this technique?
How do we make it consistent?
For example, this might include:
ways of making gesture more visible to the teacher (for example, asking all pupils to stand up and face the front)
techniques for refining the use of mini whiteboards (such as Mr Davis’ “Three…, two…, one…, show me!” routine from the start of this blog)
planning more effective hinge questions by using multiple-choice questions with wrong answers based upon common misconceptions
printing exit tickets onto slips of paper to make the checking process quicker for the teacher than it would be if they had to look in every pupil’s exercise book
There will be more details on the implementation of these techniques across Wirral schools in our case study blogs coming later this year.
The next in this series of blogs, coming in June, will focus on the ‘Adapt’ part of our ‘Check and Adapt’ toolkit: how we make appropriate adaptations according to what our checks for understanding tell us.
References
Education Endowment Foundation, 2017. Improving Mathematics in Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 guidance report.
