I really love mini whiteboards

I really love mini whiteboards. I think they are probably my most used teaching tool. I could do without a projector or Powerpoint or OneNote or a visualiser, but taking away my mini whiteboards would severely hamper my ability to teach. I use these A3 ones from Wonderwall and while they are a little pricey as an investment, they clean really nicely unlike thin ones – I’ve had a set for 5 years with none breaking or getting stained. They also don’t make that wobbly sound, which may be a pro or a con depending on your feelings about wobble boards. They are plain on one side and lightly gridded on the other.  In short, they are a delight and a worth every penny.

In my classroom, mini whiteboards are probably used 10+ times per lesson. I have them on a trolley at the front of the room and students collect a board, an eraser/cloth, a black whiteboard pen and a coloured whiteboard pen (red/blue/green) on their way into the classroom. At the end of the lesson, I wheel my precious babies back into a cupboard.

The first use is always the Do Now, which is usually just some recall questions from recent lessons and/or questions covering pre-requisites for the day’s lessons. I just write these on the main whiteboard before the lesson. Students write as many answers as they can on their board in black dry erase pen. For any that they really can’t remember, they look it up in their notes and write it in coloured pen. This gives me the benefit of knowing what they can and can’t remember easily, whilst still maintaining the expectation that they should have answers to every question. There is obviously the temptation to look stuff up without even trying to remember it, but we talk about how the way to get good at remembering stuff is to practice remembering stuff, and sometimes that means really trying to dig deep even when you can’t easily recall it – it’s like getting the most out of the gym when you try to do more, even if you aren’t 100% sure you can do it.

When I’ve done the register, I do a count down and then see all the boards at once. Adam Boxer does a really good CPD session on managing all the palaver around this, and I can confirm that once you’ve done the work setting up the expectations on how this is done, it makes your life approximately 1000 times easier. I then read the boards of a few pupils I can use as a yardstick and scan everyone else’s to get a feel for it. For this type of activity I typically don’t give individual feedback – I just go through answers on the board going over common errors. If there were lots of questions or I don’t feel confident I know who got what right or if I don’t entirely trust students to be able to have marked accurately, I might ask them to hold up their boards again after they have marked them so I can check. By ‘not trusting students to be able to mark accurately’, I don’t mean that I think they’ll lie (although it has been known to happen), it’s just that sometimes students might think their answer is essentially the same as mine without a proper understanding of why what they have said isn’t correct. For example, if I’ve said opportunity cost is ‘the value of the next best alternative foregone’ a student might think ‘the value of the next alternatives foregone’ is basically the same thing, when we know it’s not. Over time I have definitely got better at pre-empting these issues and so make it explicit when I’m going over answers (“You need something here to indicate ‘next best’ – it’s not all the options given up”) but there are some questions where we can’t give all of the possible answers. For example, I might want to ask ‘Give an example of a shock which would cause a reduction in labour supply’. (I get that if I had a massive group or whatever then I might want to stick with questions with finite correct answers, but as it is I like being able to ask questions where students have to think up something.) In this case, I might say that ‘increased rate of income tax’ is an acceptable answer, but a student mistakenly think that means ‘an increased rate of VAT’ is also correct.

If I see a prerequisite that isn’t as solid as I’d like, I’ll reteach and retest at this point. It’s a pain and it knocks the timing off, but it’s got to be done.

When we move on to the next part of the lesson, I’m lucky to have enough space in my classroom that they can generally manage this with little effort by putting their whiteboard on the floor or on a spare desk behind them. They know they’ll need them again soon so they make sure they are accessible.

During the main part of the lesson it makes it easy to embed lots of checks for understanding. I typically have some multiple choice (I like these posts, both from Daisy Christodoulou on MCQ design: 1 and 2) or quickfire questions prepared but it makes it much each easier to add in off-the-cuff questions too because I don’t have to worry about the logistics as much (and we all know, if it’s easier, we’re way more likely to do it). This is useful if I suspect there is a misunderstanding or misconception I didn’t predict. This has probably made my questioning better too: because I definitely do it more often, I’m now better at both finding hinge points in the lesson and coming up with diagnostic questions.

As a former maths teacher, I also revert to how I would use them in that role when we do quantitative stuff. We typically have a broad range of attitudes to maths in our Econ groups, ranging from our enthusiastic(/ “I’m above this…”)  further mathematicians to those who might get really anxious about maths. If I’m teaching, say PES, I might put a question up for everyone to do on whiteboards, then when I go through it I might tell those who got it right and are confident can go on to do an exercise on paper and those who haven’t quite got it yet can stay working with me on whiteboards.

One reason why I think MWBs are even more essential in Economics than potentially other students is for diagrams. We know they are stupidly important and, if they get them right, an invaluable tool for students to use to analyse complex systems. Given the how essential they are, I want to make sure students are getting them right and that’s time consuming, especially as self/peer assessment isn’t as straight forward as it is with short-answer written questions. Using whiteboards allows me to see everyone’s graphs at once and give really quick feedback (“yes, yes, no – check your axes, yes, no- your maximum price needs to sit below the equilibrium to be effective, yes…”). If I’m looking for something in particular, I’ll standardise the format using the coloured pen. For example, I might ask them to draw a Keynesian AS-AD diagram in black and then mark on the output gap in their coloured pen, making it even easier for me to check. Sometimes we might build diagrams in stages, for example starting with drawing a graph to show the market for apple juice. After I’ve checked and corrected everyone’s I might then ask for them to use their colour to show what would happen if there was a drought…then for them to colour in the new producer revenue etc. If I think it would be really useful to have a third colour I just ask them to swap with someone around them – I occasionally have to chuck someone a different colour but I’m surprised at how quickly they can sort it out for themselves mostly.

I also like mini whiteboards for coaching students to improve their chains of analysis. It can be difficult to check the accuracy of analysis within a paragraph in class (although it’s still easier on a whiteboard than on paper), but checking a chain on a board is very doable. For example, I might ask students to write a chain they are using in their essay for me to check before writing it up. They might write:

G up  AD up  GDP up  U down

I can then wander around the room and check them. My corrections usually fall into these categories:

-              Check your logic/precision here

-              Make it more detailed by adding in a step somewhere here

-              Give a root cause or example by adding a step to the start

-              Consider the wider impacts by adding a step at the end

We do go over those steps explicitly, but being able to coach students through using them does mean they can eventually improve their own chains. I know I could do this if students wrote them at the top of their paper, but it’s way easier to read when it is written nice and large on a board, which means I can get around the class much quicker than if I have to shimmy my way along a row and lean down next to each student. Students are also usually happier making edits on a whiteboard than on paper.

Mini whiteboards allow me to be more spontaneous if I get an idea or need to adjust the plan mid-lesson. In a lesson on wage rate determination, a student asked me how much nurses actually get paid. I turned this back to the class and go them to write down their best guess on their board. I looked on the government Explore Careers website for the exact figure and started syphoning off from the top and bottom (“Boards down if you said less than £15,000 or more than £80,000”), cutting it down until we had only the student with the closest guess left. We did that for a bunch of jobs and each time we could discuss the entry requirements, how it compared with our previously covered professions and why. It’s probably an activity I’ll add to my lesson plans in future, but I wouldn’t have taken the risk if I didn’t have a tried-and-tested routine to get all answers quickly.

Whiteboards are also super handy for consolidation work. After a lump of theory, we might just practice using the knowledge flexibly with practice exercises. For example, if we’ve been learning about producer and consumer surplus, we might go through questions like these. Students seem to be very receptive to work like this. I reckon part of it is because it feels less permanent so less like ‘real work’ (I’ve seen this called learning by stealth, which I quite like as a term even if I think learning is nothing to hide). It also makes it feel less permanent so students worry less about mistakes. The countdown, timed element feels gamified which students enjoy, and they get little bursts of dopamine when they get an answer correct. I think they also just like being able to consolidate their learning as t makes them feel secure – if we have gone through some dense theory it’s not uncommon for students to ask for some ‘whiteboard work’ to ‘get it into their brains’.

Again, having an easy-to-use routine makes it easier to include consolidation and recall into my lessons also means I end up doing it more often. In a given lesson, students might use miniwhiteboards for the Do Now, then with some consolidation, then a hinge question, then some recall, then some more consolidation. This forces them to be engaged throughout the lesson, which I think is helpful in econ because it’s sometimes not too difficult to follow each individual step, but this can lull students into a sense of security thinking they can understand and articulate the process as a whole. Forcing students to stay focussed and use their knowledge throughout the lesson keeps them on track a little more.

This leads to a more unexpected benefit of frequent use of mini whiteboards: the impact on classroom culture. Firstly, the participation ratio is really high, so I know I’ve got all students thinking much more of the time, compared to hands up or cold call. Secondly, it’s easier to hold students to an expectation that they participate. I insist they show their board when asked. If they don’t know an answer in a quick task, I expect them to write a ‘?’ on their board to acknowledge that. If they haven’t had time to finish an answer but think they know it, they write ‘…’ on their board. I have had the occasional student abuse this, but this is fairly easy to get around with basic behaviour management. One technique is to get them to write a question on their board about the specific bit they don’t understand, or to write something on the topic even if it doesn’t answer the question. Thirdly, it’s something of a leveller – louder students dominate less and quieter students participate more. Another important benefit is the culture of ‘having a go’ – students are more willing to take risks because they know their board is temporary, unlike ink on a page. They feel less like they need to be perfect. Finally, it helps students to see feedback as a useful tool rather than something to be feared. A single piece of feedback every two weeks can feel like a judgement, carrying too much weight on its own. In contrast, when feedback is frequent and low-stakes, it feels balanced — some right, some wrong — and students get the chance to act on it straight away. They experience the satisfaction of fixing mistakes quickly, see that everyone else is making errors too, and come to recognise that the purpose of feedback is their learning, not their evaluation.