DQ a Week #1: Angles on a straight line

Thinking does not need to stop with a correct answer

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Many years ago, I created (yet another) website called DQ a Day. The idea was to use the millions of student answers and explanations we had collected on diagnosticquestions.com to illustrate my mantra that with a good multiple-choice diagnostic question, thinking does not need to stop with a correct answer.

My plans to upload a resource to the website every day soon fell by the wayside as life got in the way—namely, the arrival of two sons who apparently don’t appreciate that “Daddy is just writing about misconceptions”.

My interest in resurrecting this project has returned with our recent foray into writing diagnostic questions for primary-aged students. However, I’m not sure if anyone else is interested! So, I thought I would do a test post, and you can let me know by liking it or writing a comment whether this is a worthy addition to the deluge of emails that arrive in your inbox each week.

For Week 1, I have chosen a question that over 8,000 students have answered. The question is a good test of whether students can spot a non-example of an angle fact…

Step 1: Ask the question with the choices of answers removed

This taps into research that suggests that delaying presenting the choices of answers boosts the retrieval benefits of multiple-choice questions.

Once students have had sufficient thinking time, you could:

1. Ask them to show you their answer on a mini-whiteboard

2. Ask them to show you their answer, and what they think a popular wrong answer might be

3. Simply, show them the version of the question with the answer choices revealed

Don’t respond at this stage.

Step 2: Challenge students to get the question correct

Now show the original version of the question:

Students can choose to keep their original answer or change their minds. They can respond on mini-whiteboards, with ABCD cards, or with “heads down, palms on heads.” I discuss each of these approaches here.

If fewer than 80% of students are showing the correct answer, you could:

1. Instigate a Turn and Talk: Tell your partner what you think the answer is and why, and listen to their response. If you disagree, can you convince them that you are right? If you agree, choose one of the wrong answers and try to think why someone might think it is correct.

2. Instigate a Warm Call: Tom, I see you think the answer is A, tell us why… Heena, I see you think the answer is B, tell us why…

Then ask the students to revote.

I discuss this approach to responsive teaching here.

If more than 80% of students get the question correct, move on to Step 3…

Step 3: Extending our thinking

Once you have established what the correct answer is and why, challenge your students with these questions:

• Thousands of students have answered this question. What do you think is the most popular choice of wrong answer?

• Why might somebody think answer B is correct? How would you convince them they are wrong?

• Can you change the question as little as possible to make answer A the correct answer?

• Can you think of another plausible wrong answer for this question and explain why someone might pick it?

Step 4: Explanation match-up

Finally, challenge your students to match up real-life student explanations given on diagnosticquestions.com to their answer choice:

The details:

• Link to question

• Link to the data

• Link to quiz

• This spreadsheet contains our best questions and quizzes. The final tab covers Years 7 to 11, with tabs for Years 2 to 9. I really hope you and your students find them useful.

If you find this useful, I will aim to produce a weekly post to use with your students. I will vary the topic and difficulty to ensure something for everyone. Even if you are not currently studying this topic with a class, you could use the question for an interesting form of retrieval practice or a diagnostic to see what students know before teaching a topic.

Is this useful to you?

If so, please hit like or let me know in the comments below!

Thanks so much for reading and have a great week!

Craig