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What is it?
Over the course of 2017, I have become more than a little obsessed with Clumsy Clive. It is such a wonderful idea for a series. In short, one of my all-time favourite TES authors, under the guise of a student called Clive, answers a series of questions, in this case on averages and range. The problem is, Clive is prone to making the odd mistake. It is the job of the students to cast their eyes over Clive’s work to see if they can spot, explain and correct the mistakes. The beauty is, the mistakes Clive makes have been carefully chosen to reflect common misconceptions in the topic, and hence completing this experience is a fantastic way to assess and help resolve any lingering misconceptions students may have.

How can it be used?
There is now a whole series of these covering a wide range of topics (click on the author’s name to visit his shop), and so you can bring Clive into many lessons if you choose. There is always the worry that presenting students with misconceptions may actually cause them to develop misconceptions that were not there in the first place. The evidence for that is limited at best, but it is probably fair to say that to fully benefit from this approach students must first know the correct procedure. So, my advice would be to either use these resources at the end of a topic unit as an effective way of assessing understanding, or use it as an introduction to a topic unit that you know students have studied in previous years as a means of assessing baseline knowledge. I love Clumsy Clive!

Thanks so much for sharing
Craig Barton

Download: Clumsy Clive On Averages and Range
View the author’s other resources