This week I received the following tweet from @MrCampbellSHS:
“Does Diagnositc Questions have a Top 10 Misunderstandings, or something similar? Clock’s ticking, and I need a bit hitting lesson for my Year 11”
A great question!
So, with the GCSE Maths exam scarily close, and (as Mr Campbell rightly points out) every second spent in lesson incredibly important, I thought it would be useful to look back over my Diagnostic Questions analysis over this academic year to find five important misconceptions in GCSE Maths.
Here is how I plan to use these in class:
1. Show the questions to my students by projecting them one at a time on the board
2. Challenge students to write down the answer and how they would explain it
3. Get them also to predict the most popular wrong answer and why they think students might for that
4. Have a vote about the correct answer and a discussion if needed
5, If it unveils a major misconception, then I will tackle it using the tips contained at the bottom of each post, and assess understanding using the related quiz. If not, then move onto the next!
It may take 5 minutes, it may take 50 minutes, but either way it should be time well spent!
Below you will find a version of the question you can use in class, together with a link to the blog post analysing the misconception, and a link to a related quiz that you might like to set to your class
Misconception 1: Tree Diagrams
Misconception 2: Backwards Means
Misconception 3: Negative Numbers
Misconception 4: Double Brackets in Context
Misconception 5: Two Way Tables
I hope you and your students find this useful, and happy revising!