How to Spot Common Misconceptions

In our lesson today, our students have done some algebra. When we go onto the Heat Map for that assignment, we can see straight away that there are a couple of questions students were getting stuck on.

We know that we can tap the number at the top to look at all the students’ workings. But if we look at numbers 8 and 9, there’s a little red light at the top. This shows us something quite interesting - the red dot means a common misconception has been found by Magma.

If I tap onto problem 9, you can see on the left-hand side a common error has been highlighted. This is where multiple students have reached the same incorrect answer. When I tap on Show, it’s clear why. The students haven’t used quite the right process, and they’ve all made a similar mistake by forgetting to take the minus sign onto the -10. They’ve ended up adding 10 rather than subtracting 10 in the answer.

Now, what we can do here is talk about this with the class and show both answers - +10 and -10 - and have a discussion about the right way of solving this problem.

I’m going to press the pin icon in the top of Luca’s solution here and then go back a level to the whole class. I’ll then pin several other solutions that reached different versions of that answer. I’m going to go for four because that generally looks quite good on the screen. When I press the pin icon on the top toolbar, it’s only going to show me those four solutions I’ve pinned.

Of course, we can press Anonymise here, and we can also hide the answers too. Just like that, I’ve built a bespoke learning resource that I can use to open up a pedagogical discussion with my class. And it’s based on their own work from the children in that room.

I can’t overemphasise how powerful this is, because now we can break down these answers and the methodology, and figure out together as a class which is the right approach to take.

If we want to dig in further to one of these, we can simply select one of those student examples and then press Play in the bottom right-hand corner to see them working it out in real time. As a teacher, I can press Pause at opportune moments and lead more discussion with my class.

I keep saying “discussion” and “conversation” because that’s exactly what makes this feature so powerful. It really opens that doorway with your children.

In this situation, what I’d normally do next is model the correct approach myself. I can do that by tapping the Solve button, and then solving it with the whole class to demonstrate the right solution. Don’t worry - I won’t make you watch that, because my handwriting is awful and you don’t need to see it!

But what you might like to see is the rest of our Magma video series, because we’re digging into lots of different features of Magma to help you become a Magma master. So do check them out on the Magma website and YouTube. I’ll see you next time.