Help students add more detail

I recently marked Year 12 half-yearly exams and the two most comment bits of feedback I gave:

• Be specific

• Fully explain your points.

Generally, I find student responses meander. They don’t give concrete details and they only offer superficial explanations. This is frustrating — for students and teachers. For students, because they can’t access higher marks. For teachers, because students could do so much better if they only did some elaboration.

I try and help my students provide more detail and explanation through a particular activity. I’ve named this ‘What works, what doesn’t’.

I make it simple for myself. I take a past exam multiple choice question, such as the one I’ve included below. This comes from the 2017 NSW Economics HSC (Source: NESA).

Then, I paste this onto a doc and create a very simple table that sits below the multi question.

Students then complete the task. They must provide the explanation — the specifics, the details — to clearly articulate why the response is correct or why it is incorrect.

I make it clear to students: if you say, “because it’s the right answer” or “because it’s wrong answer”, that’s insufficient. You’ll be asked to try it again. 

As I circulate in the class, there’s a couple of prompts I’ll use to get students to add to their explanation:

• What makes you say that? (Thanks Project Zero!)

• Why is this the case? 

• What’s the error in logic that’s being made here?

An extra step is having students go through the process verbally. To have them provide their explanations in a conversation with you, rather than writing them down. This is time consuming and it’s not possible to interact with every student in this way. But, when you can do it, I find it very valuable in checking on student understanding and their ability to explain. In detail.

A methodical approach to multis

I think multiple choice questions are an amazing teaching opportunity in economics. 

Think about how tough it is to create a multiple choice question. You need to choose some content, link it to other content or a hypothetical example, make the students think and then include answer options that are similar but still have a clear(ish) winner.

Think also about the value in having students decode and deconstruct multis in a very methodical way to test their content knowledge. I see this as a valuable endeavour.

I’ve created a video (see below) going through all the multis in the 2019 NSW Economics HSC. Check out the exam and marking guide. The video takes you through my process, which I in turn share with my students in class. I am methodical because I want them to be methodical. I want them to take the time now, while they’re practicing, to really interrogate the questions and thoughtfully exclude options, not just identify the correct answer.

Let’s be clear: I don’t expect students to undertake all of this detailed process in their exams. But I do expect students to carry through some of these strategies, particularly some form of annotation. I continually encourage my students to do this all the time, multis, shorts, essays, whatever.

Oh. If you’ve got a better way of answering question 14, let me know in the comments. I didn’t love that one.