Checking for Understanding & Feedback
Ask Five
Put the same question to five chosen students and treat their answers as the room's
What is it?
Ask Five is a quick spoken check to run before you move on: you put the same question to about five students, chosen on purpose, and read their answers as a sample of the whole room. One volunteer tells you almost nothing, while a full everyone-answers routine costs minutes, so a deliberate sample sits usefully between the two. Choosing the five well is most of the technique: spread them across attainment and seating, and include at least one student you suspect is lost.
The steps
- Pick the five when you plan. Write the check question in your plan, with five names beside it. Spread the names across attainment and across the room, and include at least one student you suspect is lost. Leave out the students whose hands are always up.
- Ask the whole class first. Put the question to everyone, wait about three seconds, then say the first name. While nobody knows who is next, all thirty have a reason to rehearse an answer. The mechanics come from Cold Call: warm tone, name at the end.
- Ask each of the five the same question. Keep the wording identical each time, so that the answers can be compared fairly. Keep the pace brisk: aim to hear all five within about two minutes.Same question to four more people, so I know where we all are. …Reuben?
- Follow up bare answers. When an answer arrives without a reason attached, ask for one. A correct answer built on faulty reasoning counts as a wrong one.Right answer. How did you get there?
- Read the sample as the room's answer. If all five answers are secure, move on. If two or more share one wrong idea, deal with that idea now. If the wrong answers are of different kinds, reteach the step to everyone. Treat these thresholds as a guide and adjust them to the stakes of the next task.
- Say what you heard and what happens next. Name the pattern out loud, so that the class sees the answers steering the lesson:Two of our five used yesterday's method, so we're doing one more example together.
What it looks like
Mr Vaughan has just finished explaining perimeter to a class of 11-year-olds, and five names are pencilled in his plan: Tia, Marcus, Lena, Dev and Kadie, who avoided his eye throughout the explanation. "Rectangle on the board, seven by four. What's its perimeter? …Tia?" "Twenty-two centimetres, because you add all four sides." Marcus and Lena agree and give their reasons.
Three secure answers, and the practice sheets are sitting ready on his desk; he very nearly begins handing them out. He asks anyway. "Same question, Dev." "Twenty-eight? You times the seven and the four." Kadie has multiplied too. Two of his five have slipped into area, so the sheets stay where they are while the class untangles the two answers on the board together.
How you’ll know it’s working
- The lesson plan shows the check question with five names beside it, and the names vary from lesson to lesson.
- A full round, from first name to decision, takes about two minutes.
- Students who have not yet been named keep working on the question: eyes stay on the board between answers, and the fourth and fifth answers come as promptly as the first.
- Across a fortnight the sample changes the lesson at least once or twice: a reteach happens, or one common wrong idea is dealt with by name.
Pitfalls & fixes
- Sampling the usual suspects. Five willing volunteers tell you what one volunteer would tell you, five times over. Choose the names at planning time and audit the list: if all five would have raised a hand anyway, redraw it.
- Softening the question for weaker students. A gentler version for the student you worry about feels kind, although it quietly ruins the sample, because the answers no longer compare. Keep the question identical and offer the support after the check instead.
- Letting the round sprawl. One interesting answer turns into a five-minute discussion and the check never reaches a decision. Keep each exchange to about twenty seconds, note the tangent, and return to it once the class knows what happens next.
- Carrying on over a split sample. Two wrong answers out of five can point to a dozen confused students, and moving on regardless teaches the class that the round is theatre. Decide at planning time what result would stop you, and let it stop you.
Weigh it up
Why it’s worth it
- You get an honest reading of the room in about two minutes, with no boards, slips or marking involved.
- The deliberate spread corrects the oldest bias in questioning: volunteers over-represent the confident, so a chosen sample surfaces the students you would otherwise discover only when marking.
- Because each question goes to the whole class before any name is said, every student has a reason to rehearse an answer, so the check doubles as participation and attention.
- On review content, the round works as retrieval practice for the whole room, and the five spoken answers give everyone models of full reasoning to compare with their own.
- Over the weeks, the rotating names build a picture of individual students that whole-class boards cannot: you hear reasoning in students' own words, including from those you might otherwise never hear.
The costs
- Five is a small sample, and it can mislead. A run of secure answers can still sit on top of a lost back corner; careful choosing reduces that risk without removing it.
- Choosing well requires knowledge of the class. In September, or with a hundred and fifty students a week, your guess at who is lost will often be wrong.
- It leans on a naming culture that already feels safe. In a room where being chosen feels like an ambush, a deliberate sample can read as targeting, whatever you intend.
Adaptations
- Early years / lower primary: a front-of-room round of five is a long wait for young children. Ask your five one at a time while they work, kneeling at their tables and using the same question each time, and gather the sample over a few minutes rather than in a single round.
- Secondary: tie the round to the moment just before independent practice, where it earns the most. Ten seconds per answer can decide whether the class spends the next twenty minutes practising sound method or rehearsing an error.
- Post-16 / adult: explain the sampling and it comes across as fairness: "I'll put each question to a handful of people, so across the session I hear from everyone." Adults tend to accept deliberate naming once they know it is a system.
- Practical subjects: sample before you release the class. At the end of a demonstration, ask five students for the next step before anyone touches the equipment; a split sample is a reason to demonstrate again.
Where this comes from
Doug Lemov codified the deliberate sample for schools as 'Targeted Questioning' in Teach Like a Champion. Two well-evidenced ideas sit underneath it: Rosenshine's principle that effective teachers ask many questions and check the responses of all students, and Black and Wiliam's case that learning improves when teaching adjusts to evidence gathered during the lesson. The five-student format itself is a practical compromise between that ideal and the clock, and it has not been trialled in isolation.
Sources
Related techniques
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