When I look back at the questions I asked students, one thing really pops out. I did not try answering my own questions. As a result, my students got rough drafts.
If I were cooking food to serve guests, I’d NEVER give them soup that I hadn’t tasted. In fact, I’d probably taste it several times. I’d have my wife taste it. “Hmm, needs more salt” and so on. My guests would get the 5th or 6th revision of the soup.
Imagine how horrified a restaurant owner would be if the kitchen didn’t taste the food before serving it! (Imagine how horrified my students’ parents would have been if they knew I was handing out worksheets I hadn’t even proofread 😬).
My Students Ate Gross Soup
So, yes, I did frequently serve up untested worksheets. My students faced questions and tasks that hadn’t been proofread or revised. Occasionally, an unusually brave student would say, “Mr. Byrd. I don’t really, um, get this.” But most kids do not have the gumption to question the teacher’s questions. They just do their best! They chew the strangely seasoned food without saying anything.
I wish I had been be proactive. I should have served up well-tested tasks. And I don’t mean just typos and awkward sentences. I mean, some of my tasks just didn’t make sense!
Example: Depth and Complexity
My best “test your soup” example was this worksheet. It has lots of Depth and Complexity icons but no actual instructions! (more on Depth and Complexity here if you’re not familiar)
It’s SO obvious in hindsight that I needed to, um, write actual questions for my students to answer. But this didn’t seem obvious until I actually tried filling one of these out myself. I didn’t know what I was asking for because, well, I didn’t ask for anything! (I wrote more about this very common Depth and Complexity problem here.)
Example: I Don’t Know What I Was Asking For 🤦♂️
Another example of not testing my soup was this direction from a science task card:
Analyze the characteristics that made this volcano unique.
Years later, I do not know what this means. It sounds like a sentence a bad AI generated. I’m sure my students were confused. What does “analyze the characteristics” mean? I think I just wanted them to contrast this volcano with other volcanoes. So I should have just written that!
❌ Analyze the characteristics that made this volcano unique.
👍 Give me at least three details that make your volcano unique amongst this group: Mount Vesuvius, Mount Fuji, Mount St. Helens, Krakatoa, and Mauna Loa.
Much clearer, right? And now I have room to go further and ask follow-up questions. I wrote about this volcano task here.
Example: Clarity
Sometimes, when I test the soup, I realize that a question is just way too wordy. Cutting down on extraneous words will sharpen the question.
❌ Think of other stories we have read in Room 20. What character from these other stories we’ve read is similar to the main character Luke? Please explain why you think that character is similar to Luke.
👍 What character from another story would get along best with Luke?
That second version is so much clearer, right? And half of the savings is removing the request to “explain why” (here’s why I never ask for explanations).
I Didn’t Have Time
Yeah, it’s obvious that I shouldn’t have given students rough drafts of worksheets. But, you know the reason why I did this! I didn’t think I had time. Here are two things I’d go back and ask myself.
- If I think X is important, but I never do it, that means something is blocking me. Usually I’m blocked by tasks that feel urgent – but are not actually important. I wrote more here about urgent vs _actually important) here. Learning to focus on Important and ignore Urgent is, well, important!
- Am I just assigning too much work? The more things I assign, the more things I had to create. Then I’d try to grade everything (here’s why grading so much was a mistake). This is a big reason I like designing larger tasks with clear sequences and high-level questions. My students could keep working on one thing for a long time. I just had to make ONE sequence.
AD: But, frankly, you often do not have the time to create high-quality sequences for everything. That’s why I make them for you at Byrdseed.TV! 🙂