Writing a hinge question, and reading the answers

The idea comes from Dylan Wiliam. In a 2015 article for Educational Leadership he describes planning a lesson around one concept students must grasp before moving on: “At this hinge, the teacher asks a hinge question to check that the class has understood this key point of the lesson and gets a response from every single student.” He sets a tight budget: “Teachers should design the question so that it takes students no more than two minutes to respond, and they should be able to collect and interpret all the student responses in 30 seconds or less.”

In our lessons the hinge comes in Apply, straight after the teacher has exploded a quotation and before anyone writes. It takes five minutes, with mini whiteboards, and the answers decide where each student starts the writing task.

One right answer, two useful wrong ones

Our hinge questions have three options. One is right. Each wrong one is a misconception you expect to meet, so a wrong answer tells you why the student went wrong. In Wiliam’s examples the wrong options are “so plausible that they’re attractive to students with incomplete understandings”.

The teacher notes in our lessons meet the same misconceptions again and again, and they make good wrong options:

• the literal reading, which takes an image at face value
• the half reading, which sees the image and misses the word that matters
• context taken for the writer’s own view, such as reading Scrooge’s talk of the surplus population as Dickens agreeing with Malthus
• a misread tone, such as taking a cruel line as a joke
• a mix-up over who is speaking

The Lesson 3 example

Lesson 3 of our A Christmas Carol scheme is free to download as a sampler. After the class has exploded “solitary as an oyster”, the hinge asks: Dickens calls Scrooge “solitary as an oyster”. Which reading does the text best support?

• A. Scrooge is precious, like a pearl.
• B. Scrooge is closed off, but something good may be hidden inside.
• C. Scrooge prefers to live by the sea.

B is right. The teacher notes say what the other two mean. A student who chose A has read the image and missed the word “solitary”, so recap the word before they write. C is the literal reading, and those students start the writing task on Securing, the most supported of our three levels of support.

Asking it

Students write a single letter on a mini whiteboard and hold it up on a count of three, so nobody waits to see what a neighbour wrote. Wiliam suggests finger voting, which does the same job: every student answers at the same moment. Scan the room, note the names behind each wrong answer, and keep to his 30 seconds.

Reading the answers

Wiliam’s third principle is “On the basis of student responses, decide whether to go forward or back.” In practice the boards show one of four patterns.

1. Nearly everyone is right. Go on, and go first to the few who were wrong when the writing starts.
2. A cluster on one wrong option. That misconception belongs to the class. Teach it directly for two minutes, using the line on the board, then ask a quick second question to check.
3. Wrong answers spread across both options. The explanation has not landed. Go back to the quotation and the word you zoomed in on.
4. Most of the class is wrong. Reteach before anyone writes. Wiliam’s advice is to review the material, “perhaps dealing specifically with misconceptions revealed by the student responses.”

In our lessons the answers also set the starting level for the writing task. The notes for each lesson say which answers point to Securing, and students can move up a level as soon as they are ready. One question, three levels of support explains how that works.

Check before you use one

• Can a student get it right for the wrong reason? Wiliam’s test: “If students with the right thinking and those with the wrong thinking can answer a question in the same way, it’s not very valuable as a diagnostic tool.”
• Can it be guessed from the shape of the options? Students learn patterns fast. Move the right answer around between lessons, and keep the options a similar length so that the right one never stands out as the longest.
• Does it test the main idea of the lesson? A hinge on a side detail tells you nothing about whether the class is ready to write.
• Is it quick to read? Three short options on one slide, readable from the back of the room.

Sources

• Dylan Wiliam, Designing great hinge questions, Educational Leadership (September 2015)