The benefits of teachers writing Diagnostic Questions together
In this series of posts concerning the pedagogy and practicalities of using diagnostic questions, we have considered:
What is a Diagnostic Question?
What makes a good Diagnostic Question?
Asking Diagnostic Questions in class
Responding to Diagnostic Questions in class
When to ask a Diagnostic Question — Part 1
When to ask a Diagnostic Question — Part 2
When to ask a Diagnostic Question — Part 3
Now let’s turn our attention to the matter of teachers working together.
I used to think the most effective way of teachers working together was to jointly plan lessons. Hence, each year when Year 11s and Year 13s had finished their exams and we had some “gained time”, us maths teachers would pair up to plan lessons and resources together for the next school year.
The problem was, many of the heated discussions that followed were rarely about pedagogy…
I am going to say something potentially controversial here — I think the joint planning of lessons is a bit of a waste of time. I find that it often leads to arguments and disagreements, but not necessarily about the right things. The problem is that teachers are very different:
- Some like group work, some don’t
- Some like worksheets, so don’t
- Some use PowerPoint, some don’t
- Some use animations, some don’t
- Some like Calibri, some like Comic Sans
Squabbling over these matters is not the most effective way to use teachers’ limited time. Instead, I believe teachers should write questions together.
It is incredibly difficult for teachers acting alone — whether they have many years of experience, or are just starting out on their careers — to anticipate the mistakes and misconceptions that students may have. Any of you who have tried one of my Guess the Misconception challenges can testify to this. Creating diagnostic questions together in the manner I will describe soon can help make this task a lot easier.
But that is not all. Here are some additional benefits to teachers writing questions together:
Good questions are transferable
Teachers often say to me “have you got anything good for teaching (insert topic)”, and I think to myself: well, I have got something that works quite well for me, with my teaching style, with the knowledge of my students, the time of day I taught it, and so on, but it might not necessarily work for you. Likewise, my colleague could teach the best lesson in the world, and in my hands, without significant adaptation, it could be a disaster. The problem is a good lesson is not necessarily a good lesson for everyone, but a good question is, and once you have a good question it lasts a lifetime.
Good questions are not technology dependent
If you have teachers in your department who are whizzes on IT, then they can get out the iPads, voting devices or whatever else they like if that is how they choose to ask questions and collect the data. Likewise, if you have teachers who have been known to write on the expressive interactive whiteboard with a permanent marker, then they can print out or write up the question and get students voting with their fingers.
Good questions are not style dependent
My teaching has undergone a significant transformation over the last few years. My lessons are much more teacher-led, favouring a model of explicit instruction with a more careful use of rich tasks and inquiry-based lessons. But that does not mean I will benefit any more or any less than my colleague who loves projects, investigations, group work and so on. We can both ask the same questions, both get the same results, and deal with them as we choose. This is certainly not the case when asking teachers to all use the same activity.
Good questions help promote consistency in teaching and assessing
Related to all this is the fact that good questions ensure a certain amount of consistency in teaching and assessing. If you are in the kind of department where you have freedom how you plan and deliver your lessons, then ensuring all teachers are asking the same questions at certain stages of their lessons or throughout the topic unit ensures that everyone has a good idea of where students need to be heading.
Their creation promotes positive discussions between colleagues
I have already outlined some of the problems I have encountered when colleagues are asked to plan lessons together. This does not tend to happen with questions. Perhaps it is the fact that planning a question seems a smaller, more manageable task than planning a lesson, or perhaps there is simply less room for non-pedagogical considerations to get in the way. What is particularly nice is that fact that all teachers can get involved. I worked with one particular teacher who was vastly experienced, but for many reasons he felt a little out of place in our department, and as such rarely contributed to discussions in our weekly meetings. However, when asked to write and comment on questions, he came to life. He was able to call upon his 30-plus years of teaching experience, and share insights into where he had seen students go wrong in the past that us less experienced teachers could simply not have come up with on our own. The discussion of shared experiences between teachers in a focussed, positive manner is my favourite thing about teachers creating questions together. If I wasn’t concerned how corny it sounded, I might be tempted to describe it as beautiful.
Their creation is particularly useful for less experienced teachers
I return to the point I made at the beginning. As a novice teacher I simply had no idea of the types of mistakes students made and the misconceptions they held. It was only when talking to colleagues that I was able to learn from their experience, and I believe the joint creation of questions in the way I am about to describe is the most effective way to tap into these benefits.
What I do now
There is a real danger that maths departmental meetings can get bogged down with administrative tasks. It is a crime to have such a wealth of knowledge in the room together and not to use it effectively. Hence, we always free up time to plan and write diagnostic questions together.
The process goes like this:
1. We choose a topic that is coming up on the scheme of work for a particular year group. We tend to do this on a rota system, so Year 7 one week, Year 8 the next, and so on. This ensures that all staff have the opportunity to use the questions created, and allows for a wider range of topics to be covered.
2. One of us chooses a question from my Diagnostic Questions website on that particular topic and we play Guess the Misconception. Everyone decides what they think is the most popular incorrect answer, and we have a quick vote and a discussion. This gets everyone in the right frame of mind to start thinking about misconceptions. It is effectively priming, but for teachers.
3. Then everyone creates a diagnostic question on one piece of paper for that given topic, and their four answers (one correct and three incorrect) on another piece of paper. If we have been organised, the topic can be emailed out in advance of the meeting, and teachers can bring their completed question and answers along with them to save precious minutes.
4. People pair up and swap the piece of paper with the question on it with their partner. It is their partner’s job to write down what four answers they would choose to go with this question.
5. The pair then discuss both questions and try to come up with an agreed set of four answers for each question that they are happy with.
6. Both questions and answers are then given to another pair who evaluate them alongside my Five Golden Rules. The most important one to consider is always the last — is it possible to get the questions correct whilst still holding a key misconception?
7. The pair gives feedback on the questions and passes each back to the original author who may decide to make some tweaks.
8. The final version of the questions can either be scanned or turned into PowerPoints and shared with the rest of the department for use in lessons, homeworks or low-stakes quizzes.
Once teachers have done this a few times, the whole process takes around ten to fifteen minutes. I am ridiculously biased, but I believe there is no better way to keep the discussion positive, and focus it on the things that really matter for teaching and learning. There is simply no better way to spend precious time in departmental meetings.
And if this has whetted your appetite for more diagnostic questions, well then there are more than 40,000 of them (including 30,000 for maths), all freely available at diagnosticquestions.com
Subtle advertisement alert: my book How I wish I’d taught maths, which contains an entire chapter dedicated to the practicalities, benefits and considerations when using diagnostic questions in the classroom, is available to buy from Amazon and John Catt Education Ltd.
