Sequencing Samples of Student work

Many teachers I have worked with have found it useful to have students analyze and discuss samples of student work. This can be a powerful tool to help students discuss different strategies that their peers used, or clarify misconceptions they might have, or see how others use different representations for the same concept.

One method of doing this is to select a few samples that have different common misconceptions that the teacher noticed students struggling with during the lesson or unit. The teacher makes a copy of those samples for each small group in the class. It’s a good idea to put a strip of paper over the student names when making the copies. The student groups are given the copies and maybe even the rubric that was used for scoring them. The teacher gives a couple of questions to stimulate small group discussion that allow for students to compare and contrast the copies...