4 Top Tips on Hinge Questions

4 Top Tips on Hinge Questions

I studied hinge questions for my masters dissertation project. Most of my project was based on Dylan Wiliams work on hinge questions. A hinge question is asked before half way through a lesson, every student answers and the teacher responds within 30 seconds. As the name suggests, the response to the question determines the direction of the lesson, reteach, practice or move on. You can use them at several stages to determine understanding and you can layer them to separate students into various levels of understanding.

Here are my 4 top tips for an effective hinge question:

1.      Use multiple choice

You need to gather answers and process them quickly. The best way is to offer multiple choice. It also means that you can give students options with common misconceptions, which leads me on to…

2.      Plan carefully

Hinge questions shouldn’t just be flung into a lesson unplanned. You need to design them carefully to check student understanding. Think about what pitfalls students might fall into and incorporate that into your question. You need to see and process every students answer, mini whiteboards would be good if you want to see their working (remembering that responding quickly is important, so you might not want all their working). Multiple choice can be collected quickly using voting pads, raising hands, showing coloured cards (I get mine to use their planners as they have red, orange, green, purple and white pages meaning I can have up to five multiple choice answers).

3.      Timing

Ask at the start of the lesson to determine what they already know, ask after teaching to see how much they have understood, ask at the end of the lesson to see if you can move on next lesson. When you ask your question, it must tell you something about where the students are and how you can get them to where you want them to be. The timing will depend on the purpose, and although initially research suggested before half way through the lesson, if your purpose is to determine prior learning why not ask before any teaching? Or if to summarise learning, why not at the end of the lesson? It goes back to tip #2.

4.      Have options to follow up the hinge question

So, my students understand. Do I waste time practicing the skills or do I move on to some problem solving? They don’t understand at all, do I reteach it or expect them to be able to practice? Or what if some get it, some sort of understand and some of them are totally stuck? You need to know how you are going to move forward with the lesson and prepare for every possible outcome. One thing I did was prepare a single resource based on every outcome, with a modelled solution followed by structured questions for those who are still struggling at the top of the worksheet, unstructured questions with scrambled answers at the side for those still a bit unsure, and problem-solving questions and rich open-ended tasks or investigations for those who have a good understanding of the topic. This meant students could move down the sheet as their confidence grew. You can also get a small group or individuals to work with you at the front if they are still really struggling.