Help students add more detail

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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).

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

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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.